What do you know about nanotechnology?
Ask that question around the Christmas supper table and you are likely to get a lot of blank looks.
But it is a technology entering the practical realm and in the coming decades it promises to change agriculture as much as biotechnology has in the past 10 years.
The prefix “nano” means one-billionth. So one nanometre is one-billionth of a metre. If you were nano sized, walking across the width of a human hair would be like walking 80 kilometres.
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Nanotechnology is the manipulation of molecules and atoms, making it possible to create structures and devices that have new properties.
Already there are nano textiles with the ability to repel stains.
In agriculture, nano technology could be used in animal vaccines, pesticides, environmental monitoring and plant breeding, to name a few applications.
Down on the Farm: The Impact of Nano-scale Technologies on Food and Agriculture is a fascinating report by the ETC Group, or the Action Group on Erosion, Technology and Concentration. To check its website, go to www.producer.com and type “down on the farm” in the go box.
It notes that a university researcher in Thailand has, using nanotechnology, drilled a hole through the membrane of a rice cell and inserted a nitrogen atom to stimulate the rearrangement of the cell’s DNA.
So far, the researchers have been able to alter the colour of a local rice variety from purple to green, but the ultimate goal is to develop rice varieties that can be grown all year round, have shorter stems and improved grain colour.
Some have already dubbed such nano alteration as AMOs, or atomically modified organisms.
Another application is environmental monitoring. Already precision farming researchers are placing many small wireless sensors in fields to monitor temperature, humidity and other environmental variables and report the data by radio to a computer.
Intel, the computer chip manufacturer, has a project in a vineyard in Oregon that has these monitors.
The farmer can use the information to make management decisions such as when to irrigate. But the sensors could also monitor soil nutrients and pH levels and even the presence of plant viruses and weeds.
With nanotechnology these sensors could eventually be miniaturized to the size of dust particles.
As with all new science, nanotechnology clearly has good and bad implications depending on how it is used and regulated.
It could increase productivity but encourage greater corporate concentration.
It could improve the nutrition of foods but hold hidden dangers.
It generates many of the same hopes and fears that genetic modification does. And like genetic modification, it will generate controversy.
So it would be a good idea to learn something about it. Because, in a few years it could be the topic that enlivens your Christmas supper conversation.
