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In recent years, water pollution and pesticide accumulation in the food chain have become a serious environmental and health hazard problem. Direct determination of these contaminants is a difficult task due to their low concentration level and the matrix interferences. Therefore, an efficient separation and preconcentration procedure is often required prior to the analysis. With the advancement in nanotechnology, various types of magnetic core-shell nanoparticles have successfully been synthesized and received considerable attention as sorbents for decontamination of diverse matrices. Magnetic core-shell nanoparticles with surface modifications have the advantages of large surface-area-to-volume ratio, high number of surface active sites, no secondary pollutant, and high magnetic properties. Due to their physicochemical properties, surface-modified magnetic core-shell nanoparticles exhibit high adsorption efficiency, high rate of removal of contaminants, and easy as well as rapid separation of adsorbent from solution via external magnetic field. Such facile separation is essential to improve the operation efficiency. In addition, reuse of nanoparticles would substantially reduce the treatment cost. In this review article, we have attempted to summarize recent studies that address the preconcentration methods of pesticide residue analysis and removal of toxic contaminants from aquatic systems using magnetic core-shell nanoparticles as adsorbents.

A three year study (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) on the validation of the Trichoderma technology for growth promoting ability of Trichoderma harzianum (Th3) was evaluated in the popular wheat (Triticum aestivum L.) variety Raj 3765 at farmer's field through TIFAC-DST project entitled "On Farm Demonstration and Commercial Production of Trichoderma as Biopesticide and Growth Promoter". The biological formulation was developed at Biological Control Laboratory, Division of Plant Pathology, IARI, New Delhi, and was successfully demonstrated in two districts of Rajasthan viz., Jaipur and Kota belonging to different agro climatic zones. Rhizospheric Competence Index along with its growth promotion effect on rootlets, tillers, weight of grains and grain yield were evaluated by using it at three stages of crop viz., seed, flowering and preharvesting @ 4g/kg and @ 4ml/L along with soil treatment with a mixture of farm yard manure and formulation @ 50:1 before sowing. Compared to the first year where the farmers were unaware of Trichoderma in 2008-09, a significant increase in yield of wheat from 36.25 to 46.73Q/ha (29% in Jaipur) and from 36.88 to 50.12Q/ha (36% in Kota) has been observed after continuous application for three years (2008)(2009)(2010)(2011) The total income and the benefit cost ratio of farmers increased both at Jaipur (Rs 56242/ha, 1:1.8) and Kota (Rs 60332/ha, 1:1.9).

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