A research team at the University of Tennessee Institute of Agriculture is developing a new class of hybrid materials that could transform how farms detect and destroy leftover pesticides, fertilizers, and other agrochemicals before they accumulate in soil, water, and food. The project, led by Mi Li, associate professor in the Center for Renewable Carbon and the School of Natural Resources, has received a two-year, $300,000 grant from the USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture’s Agriculture and Food Research Initiative nanotechnology program. Collaborators at the University of Memphis and Auburn University are joining the effort, which aims to merge two very different materials into a single, portable tool for environmental cleanup.
The materials at the heart of the project are called Cello-MOFs, a combination of nanocellulose and metal-organic frameworks. Nanocellulose refers to plant-based fibers extracted from wood and agricultural biomass that are measured in nanometers, thousands of times thinner than a human hair. Despite their tiny scale, these fibers are remarkably strong, flexible, and abundant, since they can be derived from renewable forestry and agricultural resources. Metal-organic frameworks, often abbreviated as MOFs, are a family of synthetic porous particles built from metal ions connected by organic linking molecules. By tuning the choice of metal and linker, chemists can design MOFs with cavities of specific sizes and surface chemistries, allowing them to selectively capture target molecules.
The appeal of MOFs lies in their extraordinary internal surface area and functionality. A single gram of some MOFs can expose an internal surface area comparable to a football field, providing countless binding sites for guest molecules. This makes them excellent candidates for adsorbing chemical residues, catalyzing their breakdown, and even signaling their presence through changes in optical properties. Yet MOFs have a well-known practical weakness: as synthesized, they are brittle crystalline powders with individual particles that are extremely small and difficult to handle, filter, or deploy in the field. A material that works brilliantly in a laboratory flask may be nearly impossible to use on a farm.
This is where the hybrid strategy becomes powerful. By embedding MOF particles within a mat of nanocellulose fibers, the Tennessee team intends to lock the porous particles into a flexible, mechanically robust, and eco-friendly scaffold. Nanocellulose can be processed into paper-like sheets or lightweight foams, formats that are easy to manufacture, transport, and apply. In Li’s description of the concept, the two components work in synergy: the MOFs contribute large surface area and high functionality for capturing and transforming chemicals, while the nanocellulose solves the handling problems, yielding composites that can be shaped into practical pads and filters.
The envisioned end product is a tangible, portable pad-foam that could function like a sponge in contaminated wastewater or be placed on the surface of crops and produce. When the material takes up certain pollutant chemicals, even in trace amounts, its optical appearance changes in a way that can be detected under ultraviolet light. This sensing step is critical, because one of the biggest obstacles in agricultural chemical management is simply knowing whether harmful residues are present. Conventional laboratory analysis of produce, soil, and water is accurate but slow, expensive, and impractical for routine on-farm screening.
Detection, however, is only half of the design. By controlling exposure to specific wavelengths of light, the Cello-MOFs are intended to initiate the degradation of the pollutants they have adsorbed, ideally converting them into non-toxic compounds or products with reduced toxicity. This light-triggered approach draws on established photochemistry: many MOF structures can participate in photocatalytic reactions in which absorbed light energy generates reactive species capable of breaking chemical bonds in pesticide and fertilizer residues. Combining capture, sensing, and degradation in one material would allow a single pad to find a contaminant, announce that it has found it, and then destroy it.
Li’s laboratory, described as a circular biorefining lab within the Center for Renewable Carbon, specializes in converting plant-based resources into valuable chemicals, functional materials, and polymers. His work integrates wood chemistry, chemical synthesis, chemical engineering, polymer science, and nanotechnology in service of green chemistry, a circular carbon economy, and a cleaner environment. That background is well suited to the current challenge, since the Cello-MOFs themselves will be assembled from plant fibers, metals, and linking molecules, meaning the cleanup material is partly built from renewable biomass rather than entirely from petrochemical feedstocks.
The motivation for the project is rooted in a fundamental tension of modern agriculture. Chemical inputs such as pesticides, fertilizers, and plant growth boosters play a major role in raising crop yields and protecting harvests, but their use frequently produces health hazards and environmental pollution. Residues can persist on produce, leach into groundwater, and run off into waterways, where they may harm ecosystems and human health. Mitigating these chemicals is difficult for two reasons: leftover amounts are hard to detect in the first place, and once detected, converting them into harmless substances requires chemistry that is selective, gentle, and compatible with real-world conditions rather than controlled laboratory settings.
If the prototype materials perform as designed, the researchers believe the technology could enable quick, on-the-spot monitoring and cleanup of chemical residues, while also advancing approaches to purify air, detect threats, and protect the environment in agriculture and other fields. The two-year USDA funding period will be spent creating and testing the prototype Cello-MOFs, moving the concept from laboratory synthesis toward practical formats. The broader vision, as Li frames it, is to mitigate environmental pollution by using renewable biomass feedstock and green chemistry technology, closing the loop between the plant fibers that agriculture produces and the chemical residues that agriculture sometimes leaves behind.
The project also illustrates a growing trend in environmental nanotechnology: rather than relying on a single miracle material, researchers are increasingly combining complementary components so that each compensates for the other’s weaknesses. Metal-organic frameworks supply the molecular precision, enormous surface area, and tunable reactivity needed to capture and transform specific pollutants. Nanocellulose supplies the mechanical backbone, processability, and renewable origin needed to turn those capabilities into something a farmer, a water treatment operator, or a food safety inspector could actually hold in hand. Whether that partnership can survive the jump from the bench to the field will be the central question of the coming two years, but the underlying idea, a sponge that glows when it catches a poison and then destroys it under light, has an intuitive appeal that could carry it a long way.
Subject of Research: Hybrid nanocellulose and metal-organic framework materials for detecting and degrading agricultural chemical pollutants
Article Title: UTIA researchers create hybrid materials to break down harmful farming chemicals
Article References: UTIA researchers create hybrid materials to break down harmful farming chemicals. (n.d.). Original publication
Image Credits: AI Generated
DOI: Not provided
Keywords: nanocellulose, metal-organic frameworks, agricultural pollution, pesticide residues, USDA NIFA, green chemistry, nanotechnology, water remediation, photocatalysis, University of Tennessee, renewable carbon, environmental sensing
