UD researchers show that plants can accumulate nanoparticles ...(hope will spur additional interdisciplin...)

The researchers chose pumpkins for the study, Jin said, because they take in a lot of water and are easy to grow.

The plants were grown hydroponically in an aqueous medium to which nanoparticles of iron oxide, or magnetite, a magnetic form of iron ore, were added.

After 20 days of growth, the plants were cut into pieces and dried in a vacuum dessicator. A magnetometer was then used to detect if any of the particles had been absorbed by the plant.

"Our study was a worst-case scenario in order to test the feasibility of our approach in being able to detect the particle," Xiao noted. "It really provides a new technique for doing this kind of research."

Xiao, who directs the Center for Spintronics and Biodetection at the University of Delaware, noted that the magnetometer used in his physics research is similar to magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), which uses a powerful magnetic field and radio-frequency pulses to produce images of internal structures in the human body.

The magnetometer subjected the dried pumpkin plants to a low-frequency monotone to vibrate them. The vibration revealed each tiny particle of magnetite's unique magnetic signal and, thus, exact location inside the plant.

The researchers noted that in their initial screening tests, no magnetic signals were detected in lima bean plants compared to the strong signals in pumpkin plants, which suggests that different plants have varied responses to nanosized particles.

Additionally, while the pumpkins were studied primarily in aqueous media, the researchers also tested the plants in sand to which nanoparticles were added, where there was little uptake, and in soil, where there was no uptake of nanoparticles at all, according to Jin.

Jin noted how important interdisciplinary collaboration has been to the research and said she hopes to see plant s
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