Increasing the mobility and stability of nematicides using plant viral nanoparticles
S. A. LOMMEL (1), R. H. Guenther (1), J. Cao (1), T. L. Sit (1), C. H. Opperman (1), J. A. Willoughby (1). (1) North Carolina State University, Raleigh, NC, U.S.A.
Nanotechnology offers the potential to reformulate chemical compounds to make them more effective in agricultural applications. <i>Red clover necrotic mosaic virus</i> is a robust, soil-borne plant virus that is being evaluated for use as a plant viral nanoparticle (PVN). The uniformly sized icosahedral capsid can be loaded with significant amounts of small molecules. A potential application of this PVN platform is crop protection from nematode infections. A number of compounds are effective against nematodes but are ineffective in agricultural applications due to poor soil mobility and/or bioavailability. Preliminary testing with abamectin found that it could be loaded into PVNs and when dosed directly to nematodes, this formulation proved active against both <i>Caenorhabditis elegans</i> and <i>Meloidogyne</i> spp. in culture. When applied to columns of various soil types, the PVN abamectin formulations demonstrated increased mobility as compared to the free abamectin. However, enhanced mobility alone is insufficient to afford lasting protection. To impart controlled release, PVNs were integrated within a tunable polymeric matrix to provide an optimal abamectin release profile in the soil. It is proposed that formulating generally insoluble nematicides and other small compounds into PVNs with subsequent incorporation into polymeric matrices results in a crop protection system platform with tunable release profiles for highly efficacious and optimized seed treatments.
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