Nano-Delivery Systems for Enhancing Use Efficiency of Pesticides and Fertilizers.

Food security is always the biggest concern of mankind, which is directly and indirectly associated with agriculture. Use of fertilizers and pesticides contributes to the sustainable production of food in meeting the demand of ever-expanded world population. However, the low use efficiency of fertilizers and pesticides has resulted in increased production costs and accelerated environmental pollution. Nano-delivery systems, which refer to use nanomaterials as carriers that can deliver chemicals specifically to targeted sites. These systems are designed in a way that can release encapsulated chemicals in response to physical, chemical, or biological stimuli and have been increasingly applied in medical fields for therapeutic and/or diagnostic purposes. However, application of the smart nano-delivery system in agriculture relatively lags behind, since plants have cell walls with pores mostly less than 30 nm, which requires that nanoparticles should be small enough to enter plants. In addition, the nanomaterials need to be biocompatible and biodegraded with minimal impact on plant growth and food safety. To date, a large variety of nanomaterials have been synthesized and developed as effective delivery systems, like nanotubes, nanoporous materials, and polymeric nanoparticles (NPs). Among them, the accessibility and biocapability of polymeric NPs have been demonstrated in in vitro and in vivo experiments. The smart nano-delivery systems hold great potentials to revolutionize fertilization and pesticide applications in agriculture and generate economic and environmental benefits.