Substituted 1,2,3-triazoles: a new class of nitrification inhibitors.

Nitrogen (N) fertilisers amended with nitrification inhibitors can increase nitrogen use efficiencies in agricultural systems but the effectiveness of existing commercial inhibitor products, including 3,4-dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP), is strongly influenced by climatic and edaphic factors. With increasing pressure to reduce the environmental impact of large-scale agriculture it is important to develop new nitrogen-stabilising products that can give reliable and consistent results, particularly for warmer climatic conditions. We synthesised a library of 17 compounds featuring a substituted 1,2,3-triazole motif and performed laboratory incubations in two south-eastern Australian soils. In the neutral (pH 7.3) soil, the compounds N002, N013, N016 and N017, which possess short non-polar alkyl or alkynyl substituents at the triazole ring, retained NH4+-N concentrations at 35 °C soil temperature to a better extent (P < 0.001) than DMPP. In the alkaline soil (pH 8.8) N013 performed better with regards to NH4+-N retention (P = 0.004) than DMPP at 35 °C soil temperature. Overall, our data suggest that substituted 1,2,3-triazoles, which can be synthesized with good yields and excellent atom economy through 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition from readily available starting materials, are promising nitrification inhibitors performing similar to, or better than DMPP, particularly at elevated soil temperatures.

Environmental Polymer Degradation: Using the Distonic Radical Ion Approach to Study the Gas-Phase Reactions of Model Polyester Radicals.

A novel precursor to the distonic O- and C-centered radical cations Oxo+O• and Oxo+C• was designed and synthesized, which represents model systems for radicals produced during polyester degradation. The precursor is equipped with a nitrate functional group, which serves as a masked site for these alkoxyl and carbon radicals that are unleashed through collision-induced dissociation (CID). Oxo+O• and Oxo+C• feature a cyclic carboxonium ion as permanent charge tag to enable monitoring their ion-molecule reactions on the millisecond to second time scale in the ion trap of the mass spectrometer. The reactions of Oxo+O• and Oxo+C• with cyclohexene, cyclohexadiene, ethyl acetate, 1,1-dimethoxyethane, and 1,2-dimethoxyethane, which exhibit structural features present in both intact and defective polyesters, were explored through product and kinetic studies to identify "hot spots" for radical-induced damage in polyesters. All reactions with Oxo+O• were extremely fast and proceeded predominantly through HAT. Oxo+C• was about two orders of magnitude less reactive and did not noticeably damage aliphatic ester moieties through hydrogen abstraction on the time scale of our experiments. Radical addition to alkene π systems was identified as an important pathway for C-radicals, which needs to be included in polymer degradation mechanisms.

Fragmentation-Rearrangement of Peptide Backbones Mediated by the Air Pollutant NO2 (.).

The fragmentation-rearrangement of peptide backbones mediated by nitrogen dioxide, NO2 (.) , was explored using di-, tri-, and tetrapeptides 8-18 as model systems. The reaction, which is initiated through nonradical N-nitrosation of the peptide bond, shortens the peptide chain by the expulsion of one amino acid moiety with simultaneous fusion of the remaining molecular termini through formation of a new peptide bond. The relative rate of the fragmentation-rearrangement depends on the nature of the amino acids and decreases with increasing steric bulk at the α carbon in the order Gly>Ala>Val. Peptides that possessed consecutive aromatic side chains only gave products that resulted from nitrosation of the sterically less congested N-terminal amide. Such backbone fragmentation-rearrangement occurs under physiologically relevant conditions and could be an important reaction pathway for peptides, in which sections without readily oxidizable side chains are exposed to the air pollutant NO2 (.) . In addition to NO2 (.) -induced radical oxidation processes, this outcome shows that ionic reaction pathways, in particular nitrosation, should be factored in when assessing NO2 (.) reactivity in biological systems.