Skip to main content

Thank you for visiting nature.com. You are using a browser version with limited support for CSS. To obtain the best experience, we recommend you use a more up to date browser (or turn off compatibility mode in Internet Explorer). In the meantime, to ensure continued support, we are displaying the site without styles and JavaScript.

You are viewing this page in draft mode.

AGRICULTURAL TECHNOLOGY

Plug-and-play bioinspired seed coatings

Nature Food volume 2, pages 456–457 (2021)Cite this article

Subjects

Bioinspired, biodegradable seed coatings delivering plant growth promoting bacteria, osmolytes, and carbon sources provide a new tool to grow crops under the abiotic stressors accompanying climate change and marginalized soils.

In their recent paper in Nature Food, Benedetto Marelli and his team at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology focus on modifying the seed prior to planting, employing a natural polymer to encapsulate plant-beneficial microbes and osmolytes in a multilayered shell around the seed4. The team developed a seed coating from silk fibroin, a biopolymer extracted from silkworm (Bombyx mori) cocoons, and trehalose, an osmolyte that is essential in protecting microorganisms during desiccation. The formulation was further tuned through addition of pectin and carboxymethylcellulose. This novel seed-coating technology is deployed in two layers: the first is the silk trehalose layer inoculated with nitrogen-fixing rhizobacteria. The second is the pectin/carboxymethylcellulose hydrogel that serves as a carbon source for the nitrogen-fixing bacteria and a reservoir for water that can be drawn from surrounding soils.

This is a preview of subscription content

Access options

Buy article

Get time limited or full article access on ReadCube.

$32.00

Buy

All prices are NET prices.

References

  1. Dimkpa, C. O., Fugice, J., Singh, U. & Lewis, T. D. Sci. Total Environ. 731, 139113 (2020).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Gilbertson, L. M. et al. Nat. Nanotechnol. 15, 801–810 (2020).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  3. Lowry, G. V., Avellan, A. & Gilbertson, L. M. Nat. Nanotechnol. 14, 517–522 (2019).

    ADS  CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  4. Zvinavashe, A. T. et al. Nat. Food https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00315-8 (2021).

  5. Pirzada, T. et al. Curr. Opin. Colloid Interface Sci. 48, 121–136 (2020).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  6. Samateh, M. et al. Sci. Rep. 8, 7315 (2018).

    ADS  Article  Google Scholar 

  7. Edlund, A. M., Jones, J., Lewis, R. & Quinn, J. C. N. Biotechnol. 42, 12–18 (2018).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

  8. Altman, G. H. et al. Biomaterials 24, 401–416 (2003).

    CAS  Article  Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Biological Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    David W. Britt

Authors
  1. David W. Britt
    View author publications

    You can also search for this author in PubMed Google Scholar

Corresponding author

Correspondence to David W. Britt.

Ethics declarations

Competing interests

The author declares no competing interests.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and Permissions

About this article

Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Britt, D.W. Plug-and-play bioinspired seed coatings. Nat Food 2, 456–457 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00325-6

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-021-00325-6

Search

Advanced search

Quick links

Nature Briefing

Sign up for the Nature Briefing newsletter — what matters in science, free to your inbox daily.

Get the most important science stories of the day, free in your inbox. Sign up for Nature Briefing