Biomaterials for Boosting Food Security

Applications of robotics and sensing technologies, big data analysis and biotechnology in farming, plant and food science are highly sought to guarantee global food security while mitigating the environmental impact of agriculture. In this scenario, the potential benefit of applying biomaterials science and drug delivery principles to enhance food security remains underexplored when compared to material- based research efforts in biomedicine, energy and optoelectronics. In this seminar, we highlight recent development in the nanomanufacturing of structural proteins to engineer a new generation of advanced materials that can be interfaced with food and plants. We will present newly developed techniques to direct the assembly of structural proteins into nanostructured, hierarchical materials that can serve as: edible coatings to prolong the shelf-life of perishable food, microenvironments to boost seed germination in marginal land and injectors to precisely deliver payloads in plant vasculature. These examples will provide an opportunity to discuss how the establishment of a successful interface between biomaterials and plants tissues requires the development of a basic scientific knowledge on: mechanics of disorder to order transitions in proteinaceous materials during condensation phenomena, fluid mechanics and transport phenomena in plants vasculature, and swelling of porous materials exposed to plant fluids.