Engineered Carbon Dots as Plant Nanobionics: Mechanistic Insights of Biodegradation, Nutrient Delivery, and Gene Modulations for Smart Sustainable Agriculture
Zulqarnain Haider, Bahar Ali, Muhammad Yasin, Samta Zia, Muhammad Rehman, Yang Chunyan, Irshan Ahmad, Yinbo Gan
Abstract
Carbon dots (CDs) have emerged as a revolutionary nanomaterial with great promise to modernize agriculture, improve plant growth, enhance stress resilience, enable targeted biochemical regulation, and transform the methods of delivering biomolecules, nutrients, and gene-editing components. Owing to their eco-friendly carbon core, unique optical, chemical, and biocompatible characteristics, CDs can serve as futuristic nanomaterials with tailored features for target specific applications, hence lessening the environmental impacts. Recent developments have further revealed their capacity to conjugate with genetic material and gene editing components, enhancing the efficiency of targeted genome-editing for crop development. Advancements in tuning the CDs with various functionalities indicate that functionalized CDs can be loaded with nutrients, polymers and other bioactive compounds, thereby assisting cells in mitigating abiotic and biotic stressors including drought, salinity, and disease infections by altering plant modulating genetic and biochemical pathways. Green synthesis methods have been modernized to extract CDs from plant components or waste materials, hence promoting circular economy and sustainability. By addressing significant global issues such as malnutrition and climate change, CDs can help to pave the way for a sustainable and resilient agricultural future. In this particular review, we categorically discuss the most recent developments in CDs, their green synthesis methods for plant improvements, the fundamentals of surface functionalization, chemical interactions with biological molecules in plants cell during stresses and the most recent application trends of CDs in gene editing and nutrients delivery for the future of sustainable and new-generation agriculture.