Pesticides are agrochemical compounds used to kill pests
(insects,
rodents, fungi, or unwanted plants), which are key to meet the world
food demand. Regrettably, some important issues associated with their
widespread/extensive use (contamination, bioaccumulation, and development
of pest resistances) demand a reduction in the amount of pesticide
applied in crop protection. Among the novel technologies used to combat
the deterioration of our environment, metal–organic frameworks
(MOFs) have emerged as innovative and promising materials in agroindustry
since they possess several features (high porosity, functionalizable
cavities, ecofriendly composition, etc.) that make
them excellent candidates for the controlled release of pesticides.
Moving toward a sustainable development, in this work, we originally
describe the use of pesticides as building blocks for the MOF construction,
leading to a new type of agricultural applied MOFs (or AgroMOFs).
Particularly, we have prepared a novel 2D-MOF (namely, GR-MOF-7) based
on the herbicide glufosinate and the widely used antibacterial and
fungicide Cu2+. GR-MOF-7 crystallizes attaining a monoclinic P21/c space group, and the asymmetric
unit is composed of one independent Cu2+ ion and one molecule
of the Glu2– ligand. Considering the significant
antibacterial activity of Cu-based compounds in agriculture, the potential
combined bactericidal and herbicidal effect of GR-MOF-7 was investigated.
GR-MOF-7 shows an important antibacterial activity against Staphylococcus aureus and Escherichia
coli (involved in agricultural animal infections),
improving the results obtained with its individual or even physical
mixed precursors [glufosinate and Cu(NO3)2].
It is also an effective pesticide against germination and plant growth
of the weed Raphanus sativus, an invasive
species in berries and vines crops, demonstrating that the construction
of MOFs based on herbicide and antibacterial/antifungal units is a
promising strategy to achieve multifunctional agrochemicals. To the
best of our knowledge, this first report on the synthesis of an MOF
based on agrochemicals (what we have named AgroMOF) opens new ways
on the safe and efficient MOF application in agriculture.