Globally, more than 70% of fresh water is used to produce crops.
Qingsu Cheng, assistant professor, biomedical engineering, is the principal investigator on a three-year, $649,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture, to develop and test a technology that assures the quality of reclaimed water and agricultural wastewater so that more can be used in irrigating crops. The project will aid in improving food and water security.
Currently, these alternative water sources are poorly monitored and can transmit waterborne diseases that are passed on to people who eat the crops, Cheng said.
Using biospecimens from farms and water treatment plants, he will create probes using nanoparticles to identify the presence of bacteria and microchip screening to allow nanoparticles to target different kinds of bacteria through position coding.
This proposed technology will be able to cost-effectively profile multiple pathogens simultaneously in 15 minutes.
“After validation in the lab, we will test the product with wastewater and irrigation water to determine the efficiency of our product,” he said.
The research is conducted in collaboration with Troy Skwor, UWM associate professor of biomedical sciences, and partners at the University of Cincinnati. Skwor is responsible for developing high-efficiency, non-antibiotic sterilization treatment that is not toxic to plants and animals.