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iBRIC-inStem with Sepio Health develops Kisan Kavach to protect farmers from lethal effects of pesticides
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Friday, 14 June, 2024, 08 : 00 AM [IST]
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Nandita Vijayasimha, Bengaluru
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Institute for Stem Cell Science and Regenerative Medicine, (iBRIC-inStem, Department of Biotechnology), in collaboration with Sepio Health Pvt Ltd (a spin-off company from inStem) has developed an anti-pesticide fabric by covalently attaching a nucleophile on cotton fabric, which is stitched as “Kisan Kavach.
This Kisan Kavach fabric can detoxify pesticides instantly upon contact through nucleophile mediated hydrolysis; and therefore, wearing the Kisan Kavach can significantly prevent pesticide-induced toxicity and lethality in farmers.
Farmers from India and developing countries are exposed to toxic pesticides through dermal and nasal routes while spraying in the field. Pesticides are chemical molecules that impact how two neurons communicate with each other and therefore they cause nervous system paralysis in insects. Unfortunately, these chemicals do not differentiate between pests and humans and therefore cause similar toxicity in humans.
These findings are reported in the journal Nature Communications, where Dr Praveen Kumar Vemula is a senior author, and Mahendra K Mohan, the lead author of the work. This research was supported by extramural funding from the Department of Biotechnology to Dr Praveen Vemula. The other authors of the paper are Ketan Thorat, Thera Puthiyapurayil, Omprakash Sunnapu, Sandeep Chandrashekarappa, Venkatesh Ravula, Rajamohammed Khader, Aravind Sankaranarayanan and Hadi Muhammad.
“Farmers are the backbone of India, and providing ‘first-in-class’ technologies to protect their health from pesticide-induced lethality is an impactful contribution to society. Kisan Kavach will have an enormous impact on safeguarding farmers from pesticide toxicity,” said Dr Praveen Vemula, associate professor at iBRIC-inStem.
“Kisan Kavach fabric attacks the pesticide molecule and breaks it into non-toxic products. The pesticide is deactivated even before it reaches the skin surface,” he added.
In pre-clinical studies conducted by the researchers, anti-pesticide fabric could protect experimental animals from a lethal dose of pesticides. The anti-pesticide fabric also eliminated the toxic effects such as loss of neuronal communication, loss of muscle function, loss of endurance, and fatality. The anti-pesticide fabric showed a broad-spectrum activity, and it could detoxify the majority of commonly used pesticides in India.
“The design of one nucleophile that can deactivate a wide range of organophosphates and carbamates was challenging. Subsequently, optimising the industry-friendly chemistry to covalently attach on the fabric was the key in developing anti-pesticide fabric,” says Dr Ketan Thorat, a former research student, inStem, and the co-author.
“Kisan Kavach is washable and reusable fabric that can be used and reused at least for one year by the farmer. At Sepio, our efforts are focused on bringing Kisan Kavach suit in an affordable manner. We anticipate that price of this suit will be equivalent to a normal dress a farmer wears on a daily-basis,” says Dr Omprakash Sunnapu, a research scientist and director at Sepio Health, co-author on the paper.
InStem’s Kisan Kavach is active against a wide range of pesticides, insecticides, and fungicides including commonly used commercial pesticides in India. Earlier, Vemula group developed a topical gel, which can be applied as a skin cream that can deactivate pesticides. These findings were reported in the journal Science Advances. These technologies can give quantitative protection for farmers.
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