Paraquat is one of the most toxic materials widely applied in agriculture in most countries. In the present study, a simple, innovative and inexpensive nano biosensor which is based on a thioglycolic acid (TGA) - CdTe@CdS core-shell nanocrystals (NCs) to detect paraquat, is suggested. The NCs based biosensor shows a linear working range of 10–100 nM, and limited detection of 3.5 nM. The proposed sensor that has been well used for the detection and determination of paraquat in natural water samples is collected from corn field and a canal located near to the corn field yielding recoveries as high as 98%. According to our findings, the developed biosensor shows reproducibility and high sensitivity to determine paraquat in natural water samples in which the amount of paraquat has low levels. The suggested method is efficiently applied to paraquat determination in the samples of natural water that are collected from a tap water and a canal located near to the cornfield.

百草枯是大多数国家广泛应用于农业的毒性最强的材料之一。在本研究中，建议使用一种基于巯基乙酸 (TGA) - CdTe@CdS 核壳纳米晶体 (NCs) 的简单、创新且廉价的纳米生物传感器来检测百草枯。基于 NC 的生物传感器显示出 10-100 nM 的线性工作范围和 3.5 nM 的有限检测。所提出的传感器已很好地用于检测和测定天然水样中的百草枯，它是从玉米地和位于玉米地附近的运河中收集的，其产量回收率高达 98%。根据我们的研究结果，开发的生物传感器在检测百草枯含量低的天然水样中显示出可重复性和高灵敏度。