Developing a Novel Agrochemical-Based MOF: A Multifunctional Platform with Herbicidal and Antibacterial Activities.

Excessive and uncontrolled application of agrochemicals has resulted in contamination of terrestrial and aquatic environments. In the past decade, metal-organic frameworks (MOFs) have been studied as agrochemical release systems to enhance efficiency while reducing the leaching of toxic molecules to the environment. In this work, we take a further step and use organic agrochemicals as linkers in the preparation of MOFs, which we have called AgroMOFs. Particularly, we have prepared a novel 2D framework, named GR-MOF-20, based on the flexible herbicide glyphosine (HGly) and the widely used antibacterial and fungicide Cu. After complete characterization by single-crystal and powder X-ray diffraction and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC), a fascinating transformation of the structure to a novel 3D-MOF (GR-MOF-21) after in water is observed, together with a burst degradation (86.0 ± 3.2% after 72 h). Considering the bioactivity of its building blocks (HGly and Cu), the combined herbicidal and antibacterial activities of GR-MOF-21 were demonstrated. Aqueous solutions prepared with GR-MOF-20 (450 mg L) demonstrated a better inhibition effect (21.7 ± 2.9% after 7 days) in the germination of seeds of the invasive weed than the free HGly (13.3 ± 2.9%). Further, the selectivity of GR-MOF-21 was tested against a nontarget plant (wheat, ). Finally, GR-MOF-21 showed an important antibacterial activity against and , achieving the results obtained with Cu solutions. These observations demonstrated that the use of herbicide and antibacterial units in the MOF construction is an efficient approach to controlling bacteria and weed plants without damaging wheat crops.