Recent progress of nanomaterials in sustainable agricultural applications

Abstract

Nanomaterials have shown immense potential for their versatile applications in various sectors like medicine, healthcare, food sector, environment, agriculture, electronics, and pharmaceutics due to their unique and tunable physicochemical properties attributed to their small sizes. Recently nanomaterials have garnered foremost interest in agricultural applications due to constructive results of various studies showing significantly better crops growth/yield as compared to traditional fertilizers and pesticides. Besides, nanomaterials have shown encouraging results to deal with problems associated with conventional fertilizers, such as low nutrient usage efficiency and unregulated nutrient release with no precise control on the nutrients delivery. Moreover, nanomaterials have positively impacted plants growth attributing to higher chlorophyll content in leaves, increased root/shoot lengths, and better stress tolerance. Furthermore, nanomaterials are extremely capable of disease detection in plants and soil remediation. In this review, we have attempted to provide the readers with a complete overview of nanomaterials in agriculture by implementing the ideas of precision farming. Hereby, we have deliberated the development of nanomaterials in agriculture in the form of nanofertilizers, nanopesticides and nanosensors for sustainable growth in crops productivity, quality and protection. We have also illuminated the possibility of integrated farm management via soil remediation using nanotechnology. Finally, we have explicated limitations and possible improvements of nanomaterials for sustainable agricultural applications.