Nanobiotechnology: Scope and Potential for Crop Improvement
The production level of foodgrains has become an issue of concern as it has shown a downward trend during the last decade. Since, there has been a drastic decrease in natural resources; it is through agriculture that we can visualize a self sustainable wo
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Nanobiotechnology: Scope and Potential for Crop Improvement Faheem Ahmed, Nishat Arshi, Shalendra Kumar, Sarvajeet Singh Gill, Ritu Gill, Narendra Tuteja and Bon Heun Koo
1 Introduction 1.1 Nanotechnology Nanotechnology is manufacturing at the molecular level—building things from nanoscale components, where unique phenomena enable novel applications. Nanos: Greek term for dwarf, Technology: visualize, characterize, produce and manipulate matter of the size of 1–100 nm (Ball et al. 2002). In layman’s language, nanotechnology is the science behind the intentional creation, manipulation, and characterization of extremely small particles and macro molecules. Nanotechnology proposes the construction of novel nanoscale devices possessing extraordinary properties. The chemical, physical, and biological properties of materials differ in fundamental and valuable ways from those of individual atoms, molecules, or bulk matter (Nel et al. 2006). To get an idea of the size of particles that nanotechnology encompasses, consider some comparisons. A nanometer (nm) is one-billionth of a meter. A typical sheet of paper is about 100,000 nm thick, a red blood cell is about 2,000–5,000 nm in size, and the diameter of DNA is in the range of 2.5 nm. The size range of highest interest in the field of nanotechnology is from 1–100 nm (Maynard et al. 2006), so nanotechnology deals with matter that ranges from one-
B. H. Koo () · F. Ahmed · N. Arshi · S. Kumar School of Nano and Advanced Materials Engineering, Changwon National University, Changwon, Gyeongnam 641-773, Republic of Korea e-mail: [email protected] S. S. Gill · N. Tuteja International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB), Aruna Asaf Ali Marg, New Delhi, India R. Gill Centre for Biotechnology, Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana, India N. Tuteja, S. S. Gill (eds.), Crop Improvement Under Adverse Conditions, DOI 10.1007/978-1-4614-4633-0_11, © Springer Science+Business Media New York 2013
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half the diameter of DNA up to 1/20 the size of a red blood cell. This size range is comparable to that of viruses and is one-fourth the wavelength of visible light. The beginning of nanoscience was mainly devoted to the study and fabrication of materials at the nanoscale, where much effort was dedicated to shrink the dimension of fabricated materials. It was the same time when the two basic fabrication approaches were defined: “bottom-up” and “top-down.” The bottom-up approach aims at building things by combining smallest possible building materials such as single molecules and atoms, which are held together by covalent forces. The advantage of the bottom-up design is that the covalent bonds that hold a single molecule together, are far stronger than the weak interactions that hold more than one molecule together. A top-down approach (also known as step-wise design) is essentially the moulding, carving, and fabricating of small materials and components by using bigger objects such as mechanical tools and lasers. Recently, ap
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