Friday, February 4, 2022

Immense agrochemical inputs, including pesticides and nutrients, are required for crop production and their use is incredibly inefficient. When considered at the global scale, these inefficiencies have tremendous economic and environmental consequences caused by emissions to the atmosphere (e.g., greenhouse gases) and surrounding water bodies (e.g., eutrophication). There are also massive losses of embodied resources and emissions when agrochemicals do not reach their target. As such, there is an opportunity for innovative solutions to have a big impact on an industry that is critical to the wellbeing of the global population. Yet, choices we make about the raw materials we use and how we design new technologies to increase performance have upstream (e.g., embodied resources) and downstream (e.g., emissions) implications. A combined approach that involves design decisions at the molecular level with systems-level analyses is necessary to preclude shifting burdens to other life cycle stages and to uncover high impact contributors across the life cycle. In this talk, I will discuss research from my group that aims at defining and addressing agrochemical use inefficiencies in crop production, including (i) evaluating tradeoffs of proposed nanotechnology solutions, (ii) sustainably designing carriers for delivering agrochemicals more efficiently to roots, and (iii) modeling nitrate transport and uptake in soil.