Paper accepted: Plant nano-immunoengineering and biostimulant applications of Ti3C2Tx MXene colloids for enhanced systemic defense against phytopathogens and stress resistance mechanisms

Today, Dr. Soofia Khanahmadi’s manuscript on the induction of disease resistance in plants by mixed-low-dimensional MXene, the latest class of carbon-based nanomaterials, has been accepted in the top-ranked journal Advanced Functional Materials. This paper describes the results of experiments Soofia did mostly during her doctoral project, but which did not form part of her thesis. At the time, Dr. Alireza Rafieerad had designed and characterised surface-improved MXenes for different immunoengineering applications in the lab of Prof. Sanjiv Dhingra in Canada, and Soofia assayed them for their potential antimicrobial and – never before tested – phytostimulatory activities. Her work was guided by our postdoc Dr. Carolin Richter and supported by her fellow doctoral candidate Naivy Nava (now also a Dr.!). During the review process, some additional experiments were carried out by Soofia and Alireza in the lab of Prof. Maik Böhmer in Frankfurt where Soofia is now a postdoc, and Dr. Stefan Cord-Landwehr performed some additional analyses in our lab. We found that these nano-materials have surprisingly broad and positive influences on plants, opening up interesting possibilities for alternative crop protection, once such nano-materials have proven sufficiently safe for agricultural applications.