Antifungal activity of biosynthesised copper nanoparticles evaluated against red root-rot disease in tea plants

Abstract

The synthesis of metal nanoparticles is an emerging area of advanced research and technology with potential application in plant protection. In the current study, with an eco-friendly approach, a convenient method was adopted, where copper nanoparticles are biosynthesised extracellularly by using Streptomyces griseus. Further, the existence of nanoparticles was confirmed by UVÀvisible spectroscopy, transmission electron microscopy, X-ray diffraction analysis and Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy characterisation. We assessed the field effectiveness of copper nanoparticles through soil application in P. hypolateritia infested tea plants. In response to seven different treatments, carbendazim exhibited superior control followed by nanocopper at 2.5 ppm dosage. However, maximum leaf yield was observed in plants treated with nanocopper. In addition, nanocopper-treated plants showed improved soil macronutrients considerably when compared to bulk copper and carbendazim treated plants. In addition, there was trivial variation in population dynamics of microbes noted in plants treated with nanocopper. These encouraging results confirmed that nanocopper could act as an efficient novel fungicide which may be used for the management of red root-rot disease in tea plantations.

Comparative environmental fate and toxicity of copper nanomaterials

“…Many applications involve the traditional role of Cu as a conductor, such as conductive dyes (Albrecht et al, 2016;Hokita et al, 2015;Tam and Ng, 2015;Kharisov and Kharissova, 2010;Tsai et al, 2015;Gopalan et al, 2016) or heat transfer fluids (Park et al, 2015;Montes et al, 2015;Azizi et al, 2016;Rizwan-ul-Haq et al, 2016), but the use of nano-Cu is rapidly expanding into novel applications such as catalysts in organic synthesis (Dugal and Mascarenhas, 2015;Lennox et al, 2016;Barot et al, 2016), sensors (Albrecht et al, 2016;Tsai et al, 2015;Gopalan et al, 2016;Brahman et al, 2016;Pourbeyram and Mehdizadeh, 2016), solar cells (Yoon et al, 2010;Parveen et al, 2016;Shen et al, 2016), light-emitting diodes , hydrogen generation (Liu et al, 2015a;Liu et al, 2015b), and drug delivery (Woźniak-Budych et al, 2016). Based on the antifungal and antimicrobial properties of Cu + 2 , Cu NPs are actively being developed for applications in agriculture and food preservation (Park et al, 2015;Montes et al, 2015;Dugal and Mascarenhas, 2015;Ray et al, 2015;Kalatehjari et al, 2015;Ponmurugan et al, 2016;Maniprasad et al, 2015;Majumder and Neogi, 2016;Villanueva et al, 2016), textiles (Majumder and Neogi, 2016;Sedighi and Montazer, 2016), ...…”

The Application of Selenium and Copper Nanoparticles Modifies the Biochemical Responses of Tomato Plants under Stress by Alternaria solani

“…Copper is an essential micronutrient that is incorporated into many proteins and enzymes, and is also important in the health and nutrition of plants [21] and in photosynthetic reactions [22]. This element, in the form of nanoparticles, has also been shown to have a strong antifungal activity [23]. It has been demonstrated that Cu NPs and Ag NPs, applied both individually and together, help in the inhibition of pathogenic fungi such as Alternaría alternata and Botrytis cinera [24].…”

Phytotoxic and Genotoxic Effects of Copper Nanoparticles in Coriander (Coriandrum sativum—Apiaceae)

“…As copper is as an essential constituent in plants, CuNPs have been utilized as antimicrobial agents for biocidal activity [15,16]. In addition, CuNPs are used in agriculture as an effective nano-metallic fungicide application in crops to protect against fungal diseases [17,18].…”