Physiological, biochemical, and molecular performance of crop plants exposed to metal-oxide nanoparticles

Food security is one of the biggest challenges for sustainable development, along with the ever-increasing global population and severe environmental issues. Nanotechnology can provide new approaches (e.g., nanofertilizers, nanopesticides, and nanosensors) to improve the crop yield. Metal-oxide nanoparticles (NPs), such as ZnO, CuO, and Fe2O3 NPs, have been applied in agriculture for pest control and biomass enhancement. Studies have demonstrated that the application of metal-oxide NPs showed either positive (e.g., increasing photosynthesis, enhancing stress tolerance, suppressing pathogens, etc.) or negative (e.g., inducing oxidative stress, lipid peroxidation, and DNA damage) effects on crop plants. Therefore, to maximize the benefits of metal-oxide NPs in agriculture application and minimize the potential ecotoxicology implications, it is essential to thoroughly investigate and better understand the interactions between metal-oxide NPs and crop plants. This chapter would extensively discuss the effects of physicochemical properties (e.g., chemical compositions, sizes, concentrations, etc.) of metal-oxide NPs to crop plants in physiological (e.g., the phenotype of plant, biomass, root length, etc.), biochemical (e.g., biomarkers, enzymatic activity, etc.), and molecular (e.g., genomics, transcriptomics, proteomics and metabolomics, etc.) performance.