Recent research on nanoparticles in a number of crops has evidenced for enhanced germination and seedling growth, physiological activities including photosynthetic activity and nitrogen metabolism, mRNA expression and protein level, and also positive changes in gene expression indicating their potential use in crop improvement. We used a medicinally rich vegetable crop, bitter melon, as a model to evaluate the effects of seed treatment with a carbon-based nanoparticle, fullerol [C₆₀(OH)₂₀], on yield of plant biomass and fruit characters, and phytomedicine contents in fruits. We confirmed the uptake, translocation and accumulation of fullerol through bright field imaging and Fourier transform infra-red spectroscopy. We observed varied effects of seed treatment at five concentrations, including non-consequential and positive, on plant biomass yield, fruit yield and its component characters, and content of five phytomedicines in fruits. Fullerol-treatment resulted in increases up to 54% in biomass yield and 24% in water content. Increases of up to 20% in fruit length, 59% in fruit number, and 70% in fruit weight led to an improvement up to 128% in fruit yield. Contents of two anticancer phytomedicines, cucurbitacin-B and lycopene, were enhanced up to 74% and 82%, respectively, and contents of two antidiabetic phytomedicines, charantin and insulin, were augmented up to 20% and 91%, respectively. Non-significant correlation inter se plant biomass, fruit yield, phytomedicine content and water content evidenced for separate genetic control and biosynthetic pathways for production of plant biomass, fruits, and phytomedicines in fruits, and also no impact of increased water uptake. While our results indicated possibility of improving crop yield and quality by using proper concentrations of fullerol, extreme caution needs to be exercised given emerging knowledge about accumulation and toxicity of nanoparticles in bodily tissues.

Over the last 15 years there has been a great deal of interest in the potential development of spectrochemical sources that come with lower operational overhead than the inductively-coupled plasma (ICP). There are many driving forces for the development of such devices, even with the likely sacrifices in terms of analytical performance. Some of these devices operate in ambient atmospheres in the electrical regime of glow discharge (GD) plasmas, wherein one of the electrodes is an electrolytic solution that serves as the medium for sample introduction. The basic operational space and analytical performance of these devices has been reviewed in the recent past. We focus in this review on the design and operational attributes of the liquid sampling-atmospheric pressure glow discharge (LS-APGD) microplasma. The rationale for the development and basic source designs are first considered, followed by practical contrasts to the other devices provided. A number of studies have been performed to assess the fundamental plasma characteristics including kinetic and excitation temperatures, as well as charged particle densities. Perhaps the greatest difference between the LS-APGD and the other plasmas is the analytical versatility that has been demonstrated. Analytes can be determined by optical emission spectroscopy or mass spectrometry (OES/MS), with sampling regimes consisting of solution phase introduction, particles produced via laser ablation, or through an ambient desorption mechanism directly from the solid state. Finally, the microplasma can be operated in alternative modes wherein either elemental or molecular-form mass spectra are obtained. It is believed that the simplicity of the LS-APGD design, combined with its analytical versatility, suggest that this singular platform could be implemented to address diverse analytical challenges.