Christudoss Abisha Christy, Sah Kundan Kumar, Vikram Rachna, Giri Sayani, Viswanathan Dhivya, Dimkpa Christian O, Mukherjee Amitava
Centre for Nanobiotechnology, Vellore Institute of Technology, Vellore 632014, Tamil Nadu, India.
Department of Analytical Chemistry, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, 123 Huntington Street, New Haven, Connecticut 06511, United States.
ACS Omega. 2025 May 13;10(20):20771-20783. doi: 10.1021/acsomega.5c01919. eCollection 2025 May 27.
The synthesis and use of reduced graphene oxide (RGO) have increased recently due to its numerous applications in drug delivery systems, regenerative medicine, fertilizers, antibacterial agents, and biosensors. Consequently, large quantities of RGO are deposited in the environment through industrial wastewater or agricultural products, whereupon they are liable to contaminate farming lands and soils in general. In this work, RGO was synthesized using two different reducing agents, namely, sodium borohydride (conventional reductant; RGO-I) and sucrose, (green reductant; RGO-II) and characterized using various microscopic and spectroscopic techniques. Subsequently, onion roots were exposed to RGO at different concentrations (1, 10, and 100 mg L) and various toxicity assessments were performed. The toxicity of RGO increased potentially as a function of the concentration. Notably at 100 mg L, RGO-I exhibited a maximum of 48% phytotoxicity with significant ( < 0.001) genotoxic effects, while RGO-II exhibited a 21% reduction in cell viability with no significant ( > 0.05) genotoxic effects. The findings from this study demonstrated the potential benefits of synthesizing RGO through safer and more sustainable methods to improve agricultural applications.
近年来，还原氧化石墨烯（RGO）的合成与应用不断增加，因其在药物递送系统、再生医学、肥料、抗菌剂和生物传感器等众多领域都有应用。因此，大量的RGO通过工业废水或农产品进入环境，进而可能污染农田和土壤。在本研究中，使用两种不同的还原剂合成RGO，即硼氢化钠（传统还原剂；RGO-I）和蔗糖（绿色还原剂；RGO-II），并采用各种显微镜和光谱技术对其进行表征。随后，将洋葱根暴露于不同浓度（1、10和100 mg/L）的RGO中，并进行各种毒性评估。RGO的毒性可能随浓度增加而增加。值得注意的是，在100 mg/L时，RGO-I表现出最高48%的植物毒性，具有显著（<0.001）的遗传毒性效应，而RGO-II表现出细胞活力降低21%，但无显著（>0.05）的遗传毒性效应。本研究结果表明，通过更安全、更可持续的方法合成RGO以改善农业应用具有潜在益处。
