Workshop to Identify Convergent Nanotechnology Approaches for Precision Delivery of Active Agents in Plants

Maintaining agricultural productivity in a changing climate, while also minimizing the impact of agricultural activity on the environment, is needed to sustainably meet future food demands. To achieve these goals, new tools are needed to improve the efficiency of agricultural inputs such as fertilizers and pesticides, and to protect crops from extreme climate events such as heat or drought.

Nanomaterials, defined as materials with no dimension larger than about 100 nanometers, are small enough to efficiently carry agents into plants, and are therefore an attractive class of materials to deliver them to precise locations in crops. Nanomaterials have been engineered to fulfill similar ‘precision delivery’ roles in other fields such as medicine.

Leveraging the lessons learned from nanomedicine to create new socially responsible tools for agriculture requires discussions between multiple disciplines and between different groups in those disciplines (research, industry, and government). Therefore, this workshop planned for September 22-23, 2022 in Pittsburgh will bring together agricultural engineers, precision medicine researchers, environmental scientists, plant pathologists and physiologists, precision agriculture specialists, biological engineers, soil scientists, social scientists, and others to discuss the challenges and opportunities to create precision delivery tools for agriculture.

About 50-100 investigators from the intersection of these different fields will meet to (1) create a prioritized list of the most transformative nanotechnology approaches that could be developed through cross-pollination of recent scientific discoveries in each discipline, (2) conceptualize new scientific approaches to meet these goals, and (3) create a roadmap and milestones to successful development and adoption of the technologies. The workshop will recruit a diverse group of talented junior faculty, postdocs, and students to benefit from their fresh perspectives and to connect them with potential collaborators and mentors in the U.S.

After the workshop, the organizers will prepare a report and a peer-reviewed open-access “Frontiers Review” publication highlighting the key barriers and opportunities for nanotechnology to promote sustainability in agriculture.

A 2-day workshop at Carnegie Mellon University will converge people, knowledge, approaches, and innovations from disparate disciplines, federal agencies, and industry to imagine non-traditional approaches for precision delivery of active agents in plants. The workshop will leverage nanotechnology advances from multiple disciplines to discover and model underlying rules of nanoscale interactions in plants and develop novel and socially accepted nanoscale research and engineering tools for making agriculture more efficient, resilient, and sustainable, and to advance plant-based biomanufacturing methods.

The workshop will allow investigators from the intersection of diverse areas of nanoscience/engineering and agriculture to discuss, among other topics: novel approaches for targeted delivery of nutrients, genetic material, therapeutics, and nutraceuticals through synthetic or biology-derived delivery vectors guided by highly selective bio-recognition molecules; the development of nanomaterials that respond to in plantae conditions of pH, temperature, redox state, and signaling biomolecules; and machine learning-based design of nanomaterial chemical and physical properties which can lead to highly precise and controlled delivery of chemicals and biomolecules in plants. Attendees will 1) create a prioritized list of the most transformative nanotechnology approaches for providing efficient and precision delivery of active agents inside plants, 2) identify novel materials and scientific approaches needed to meet these goals as well as the roadblocks to realizing them, and 3) create a roadmap and milestones for overcoming the scientific or social barriers to achieving the goals.

Experts in nominal group technique will structure discussions to maximize productivity and crosstalk among disciplines. Educational activities associated with the workshop include: (1) presentations from keynote speakers highlighting state-of-the-art knowledge on the needs for innovation in agriculture for sustainability using plant nanobiotechnology/sensing, immunology and targeted drug delivery, bimolecular engineering, omics, plant genetic engineering, analytical chemistry, and computational chemistry/biology, and precision agriculture; and (2) inviting participation of 10 to 15 senior PhD students and young scientists, defined here as either untenured faculty or scientists fewer than six years removed from their Ph.D. completion.

This workshop is aimed at promoting discussions and disseminating information about the potential of nanotechnology to enable precision delivery of active agents in plants. This will shift the trajectory of agriculture sustainability by improving agrochemical delivery, making plants more resilient to climate change, and improve plant biomanufacturing. This will enable future sustainable agricultural practices.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.