Researchers at the University of Arkansas at Little Rock Nanotechnology Center have
found that exposing tomato seeds to carbon nanotubes makes tomato plants sprout
earlier and grow more quickly. They write in the journal ACS Nano that
these results, though preliminary, suggest that carbon nanotubes could be a
boon for the agriculture and biofuel industries and lead to new types of
fertilizers:
Here, we demonstrated that the exposure of carbon nanotubes to seeds of valuable crops, such as tomatoes, can increase the germination percentage and support and enhance the growth of seedlings. Furthering these findings could result in significant developments of improved plants for the area of energy, by taking advantage of the enhancement in the biomass of the plants when they are exposed to nanosized materials and fertilizers.
It seems that the long, skinny, strawlike structures promote water uptake, because seeds exposed to carbon nanotubes contained more moisture.
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