Toxicological Impact of Nanomaterials on Plants

Dear Colleagues,

Nowadays, the Anthropocene, a new epoch dating from the significant anthropogenic impact on Earth's dynamics, can also be regarded as the miniaturization and the nanofabrication era, as Man needs to firmly react to the requirements of an exponentially growing and each day more technologically-dependent human population, under a resource-depletion reality. Miniaturization and nanofabrication benefit from enhanced scientific and technical capabilities to manufacture materials (with less than 100 nm in size) in a cheaper, lighter, less energy and raw materials demanding way, but also with enhanced properties and yet more functional. Nanomaterials will be the “emergent contaminants” of a near future, when these compounds start to appear in the environment at analytical detectable and hazardous levels. Actually, this phenomenon will be registered even sooner for those nanomaterials developed for intentional environmental applications (e.g., crop protection and fertilization, soils and water remediation). Among other organisms, plants will be the target, as well as the biological receptors, of nanomaterials and, given their sessile nature, plants will have to integrate this stressor with many others (e.g., drought, salinity, lack of nutrients, flooding, extreme temperatures, high light intensity, UV radiation and new pests) that are already challenging the diversity and the resilience of natural communities and crops. Thus, knowledge gaps in the uptake, modes-of-action, compartmentalization and biochemical and molecular responses of primary producers to nanomaterials need to be fulfilled. This Special Issue concretely aims to contribute for this purpose. The scientific community needs to develop methodological approaches capable of enhancing the strength of the evidence produced, as well as to ask the right questions and to plan the experimental designs able to address both causes- and multiple cause-effect relationships. Further, both bottom-up and top-down indirect effects on plants and their interactors need to be unraveled for revealing more complex effects (e.g., both positive and negative) of nanomaterials on primary producers and on the whole trophic chains, for less uncertain risk assessments and to better support their safe use.

Prof. Ruth Pereira
Prof. Fernanda Fidalgo
Guest Editors

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• combined stressors
• modes-of-action
• molecular mechanisms
• biochemical studies
• stress
• beneficial effects
• indirect effects