As a producer, you’re always interested in increasing your efficiency. There are lots of ways to do that. You could take out hedgerows and increase the size of your fields and equipment. You could plant crop varieties that handle more stress. But how do these affect the long-term profitability of your operation? These are short-term solutions that only use yield as the metric for success.
On the other hand, you could think of your farm as a large chessboard. You need to make moves NOW and you need to see what impact those moves will have for FUTURE success. The future of your farm is dependent on both this season’s yield and the health of the soil for future yields.
As we experience more climate extremes, crop varietal choices won’t be enough to offset abiotic stresses. Drought-resistant crops perform their best when you minimize other limiting factors. When your soil is healthy your crops are more resilient. And that leads to better yields, even during extreme weather events.
To increase soil health and profitability, you need all the tools possible in the 21st-century ag toolkit. One of those is nanotechnology. It uses endocytosis to efficiently deliver macronutrients and micronutrients into plant cells before environmental factors degrade them.
Why is Efficient Fertilizer Application So Important?
The world population is growing at a staggering rate. In 10 years it’s projected to be 8.8 billion. Farmers face the challenge of increasing production without destroying the soil. Traditional ag has increased food production dramatically, but that productivity has come at a big environmental cost.
Traditional farming practices and fertilizer applications are inefficient at delivering nutrients precisely where they’re needed. On average, 200 pounds/acre of fertilizer products were used in the US in 2022. Plant needs, weather, and soil type all determine how much of the fertilizer applied is taken up by the crop.
Fertilizer runoff is a serious water pollution problem in the US, causing algal blooms in surface water bodies downstream of farm fields. Runoff puts fertilizer where you don’t want it. It’s a challenge to get enough nutrients into your plants at the right time for optimum growth. The rise of precision farming is an answer to the runoff challenge. But it’s becoming clear it’s not a complete answer.
The use of organic soil amendments, cover crops, riparian strips, and no-till help mitigate fertilizer run-off. But those practices still don’t solve the problem of getting nutrients into crops. They do buffer water bodies by capturing nutrients in hedgerows. Cover crops, when rolled down for termination, keep the nutrients in the field for cash crop uptake.
There are two ways to get nutrients into your plant cells; endocytosis and diffusion.
Endocytosis vs Diffusion for Fertilizer Nutrient Uptake
Diffusion is far less efficient than endocytosis at delivering nutrients precisely where they’re needed for optimal plant growth and yield. It’s like standing out in the rain to get a drink of water.
You can stand out in the rain with your mouth open and get a drink, or you can get a glass and set it out in the rain. When it’s full you can drink it.
Diffusion is like standing out in the rain. You do get raindrops in your mouth, but you also get soaking-wet clothes. That’s water where you didn’t want it. Fertilizer ions that enter plant cells through diffusion (and not endocytosis through nanotechnology) take time and many ions are blown or washed away from the application site. You end up with fertilizer ions causing eutrophication in nearby water bodies – like the unwanted outcome of soaking-wet clothes.
Diffusion is passive but is considered a type of thermal motion process. The plant doesn’t have to exert any energy for nutrient ions to sink in. It works best with non-charged particles like oxygen moving out of the cell and carbon dioxide moving into the cell. Charged particles can move through ion channels or with the aid of certain membrane proteins. But individual ions take a long time to filter through the cell membrane.
Facilitated diffusion isn’t a thermal motion process like basic diffusion. But nutrient Ions move from a high concentration area to a low concentration area, concentration gradients. Ion channels come in several different forms but they all move nutrient ions along concentration gradients similar to simple diffusion.
Because nutrient uptake by plants by diffusion takes time the nutrients sit on the cell surface and are subject to oxidative stress, microbial degradation, and erosion.
Endocytosis is active. A plant has to exert energy to encapsulate the nutrient particles. Plants only exert energy on nutrients they need and they’re more readily absorbed into the plant if they’re in solution. That’s why endocytosis and nanoparticle technology are important. They get the needed nutrients into the plant structure when they need them.
How Does Endocytosis Work?
It’s the active transport of molecules into the cell by engulfing them with a plant membrane. Active transport requires a plant to produce energy in the form of adenosine triphosphate (ATP). Plants are constantly producing ATP and pulling needed nutrients and water into the cell structure with the ATP pump.
There are three kinds of endocytosis: pinocytosis, phagocytosis, and receptor-mediated. They all have a number of common steps for transporting nutrients (or bacteria) from outside the cell to the inside.
The cell first has to be activated, and alerted, that there is something at the nanoscale that it needs to address. Then it goes through chemotaxis, the cell receives chemical signals that it needs to move in the direction of the nanoparticle. The particle size determines which endocytotic process is activated. All types of endocytosis include an engulfing of the nanoparticle on the cell surface and bringing it into the cell, either to destroy it or to use it for nutrition. Plants have many specialized organelles (small organs) that need plant food which is provided through phagocytosis.
Receptor-mediated endocytosis is a specialized mechanism for bringing specific nutrients into a plant structure. This type of endocytosis allows cells to take up rare molecules from the extracellular fluid.
What is the Difference Between Phagocytosis and Pinocytosis?
The generalist processes of phagocytosis and pinocytosis are happening all around us all the time. Phagocytosis, or cell eating, is the cell’s transportation method for large particles such as bacteria or dead cell tissue. The cell engulfs the bacteria and encloses it in a plasma membrane. These large particles need to be digested (hence cell eating) and the sac, or vacuole is moved by the plant to a lysosome cell that secretes enzymes to digest the particle. There is always some residual matter that is removed from the cell through exocytosis, a process that’s the reverse of endocytosis.
The pinocytosis process captures water and suspended nutrients for plant growth. At the nanoscale, particles in solution called a solute, land on the plant cell surface. These surfaces aren’t smooth but have cracks and crevices that the solute settles into. Plant cells are constantly testing the outside cell surface for nutrients and water. When a cell senses a particle on the outside (through the chemical process of cell signaling) that it needs for plant growth the process of pinocytosis begins.
At the spot on a plant leaf cell where the solute sits a slight indentation in the cell membrane occurs. This indentation is called a “coated pit.” The cell membrane folds inward and forward, forming a cavity that holds the water and nutrient solution. The cavity becomes an enclosure. It’s pinched off from the cell membrane, creating a sac, or vesicle, in the cell interior.
This vesicle is smaller than a cell and the plant can move the enclosed nanofluids where they’re needed. The plant moves the vesicle containing large quantities of nutrient ions in nanoparticles and water through the plant via the phloem and xylem systems.
Endocytosis, Nanotechnology, and Fertilizer Efficiency
Agriculture has come a long way over the centuries. But we’re still using many of the same tools that originated in the 1950s. There’s a lot of new technology that can improve fertilizer efficiency. You can decrease the rate of application and supply plant nutrition for high yields. Trace elements are often lacking in traditional fertilizers and a separate pass has to be made to spread micronutrients. This can lead to compaction. It’s also less cost-effective.
Using less fertilizer each growing season leads to a better balance of macro and micronutrients, microbiology, and SOM in your soil. Nanotechnology facilitates endocytosis and pinocytosis.
Nanomaterials increase plant nutrient uptake through the type of endocytosis called pinocytosis. The ability of nanoparticles to attract fertilizer ions and retain them in suspension is critical to efficient nutrient absorption.
Fertilizer ions are encapsulated in the matrix of nanoparticles. Many materials have been studied for the efficient delivery of fertilizers through pinocytosis. Gold, silver, nickel, cobalt, zinc, and copper have all been synthesized from live plants. These nanoparticles all have benefits but also have environmental effects, particularly on microorganisms.
What Are the Advantages of Silica Nanoparticles?
Mesoporous silica nanoparticles (MSNs) have been proven [need cite for this] to be the most environmentally friendly material. Silica is a necessary plant nutrient. MSN attracts a wide variety of fertilizer molecules and protects them from degradation from environmental conditions such as oxidation and chemical bonding.
Nanoparticles are particularly effective in maintaining fertilizer ions in plant-available forms because they hold ions in a weak bond until the nanoscale nutrient mass is inside the plant cell. A recent study evaluated the importance of MSNs in agriculture. Silicon is one of the most abundant elements (after oxygen) and it’s needed for optimum plant health.
MSNs also are highly biocompatible, with no detrimental effects on soil microbiology. In fact, a study showed MSNs enhanced beneficial microbial communities in the corn rhizosphere.
In field studies of silica nanoparticles with tomatoes and potatoes, silica nanoparticles with their fertilizer payloads decreased the stress of saline soils and increased the rate of photosynthesis.
Strategies to Enhance Endocytosis and Fertilizer Efficiency
Fertilizer recommendations for the 21st-century ag toolkit include nanotechnology to increase nutrient absorption and decrease surface runoff.
The macronutrients that are the building blocks of plant fertilization programs are broken down into ionic form and the charged ions bond to the silica nanoparticle.
The solubility of the fertilizer ions isn’t a problem because in the nanoparticle they quickly enter the plant cells.
Nanoparticles have very different physical and chemical properties than their molecular counterparts. The pore volume of MSNs The surface area of a nanoparticle is akin to a football field and attracts molecular ions into its crevices and around its surface. The extensive pore volume of MSNs holds the payload of nutrient ions at the nanoscale in solution so plant cells readily absorb the extracellular fluid.
Nutrients on the nanoscale have different chemical and physical properties that make the nutrient transport processes quicker and more efficient.
Nanoparticle technology creates greater bioavailability of fertilizer ions within the plant cells. Fertilizer efficiency is dramatically improved because what you put on your plants goes into the plant cells and isn’t subject to environmental degradation.
Endocytosis is much more efficient with nanomaterials incorporated in your liquid fertilizer tank. Nanoparticles hold the nutrient ions in solution so the process of pinocytosis deposits needed nutrients for optimum plant growth.
Interested in learning more to increase your profit margins while healing the earth? Give our team a call at ST Biologicals. We’re excited about the potential of your farm.
