(86b) Optical Nanosensors for Plant Subcellular Imaging and Crop Stress Monitoring

Innovative sensing technologies are urgently required to improve crop productivity and agricultural sustainability in this changing climate. Plant nanotechnology has emerged as a promising approach to study plant physiology and monitor plant health in real-time. Herein, we present the development of nanosensors which can be integrated within plant tissues non-destructively to enable diverse plant biotechnology and agricultural applications. First, we describe the engineering of nanomaterials as optical nanosensors to monitor plant defense signaling pathways elicited by environmental stresses. By infiltrating nanosensors into leaf mesophyll, the plant internal stress conditions can be accessed with portable electronics in a non-destructive and species-independent manner – a combination of features currently unattainable with existing analytical approaches. We show that the fluorescence of these nanosensors can be correlated with real-time concentrations of reactive oxygen species and plant stress molecules, providing a new insight into how plants perceive environmental stresses. Additionally, we also highlight recent development in plant nanosensors to detect environmental contaminants taken up by the plant roots to monitor crop safety and quality. These advances highlight the potential of nanomaterial-enabled platforms as species-independent imaging tools to study plant stress responses to bolster our agricultural sustainability efforts.