Global warming has made heat stress an unavoidable challenge for food production. Nanomaterials such as silica nanoparticles (SNPs) offer a way to enhance the sustainability of food production in the face of abiotic stresses. While protein interactions with nanoparticles forming a protein corona (PC) are well studied in nanomedicine and nanotoxicity, this has largely been overlooked in nano-enabled agriculture, despite their potential to modulate the effects of NPs on plant cells and their resistance to stress. This project aims to investigate the uptake, localisation and biotransformation of SNPs under normal and stressful conditions.

Building upon previous in vivo studies utilising wheat as a model plant for bioimaging and PC formation, the team will conduct experiments at Aarhus University to study PC formation. Each PC formed in stressed and non-stressed wheat will be characterised using mass spectrometry-based proteomics (MS) at Lund University (LU). They will also use MAX IV at LU to examine the localisation and biotransformation of SNPs in chloroplasts. At the Technical University of Denmark (DTU), Confocal Laser Scanning Microscopy (CLSM) and Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) will be employed to study SNP localisation.