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Review
. 2017 Jun 20:8:1014.
doi: 10.3389/fmicb.2017.01014. eCollection 2017.

Nanotechnology in Sustainable Agriculture: Recent Developments, Challenges, and Perspectives

Ram Prasad  1 , Atanu Bhattacharyya  2 , Quang D Nguyen  3
Affiliations
Review

Nanotechnology in Sustainable Agriculture: Recent Developments, Challenges, and Perspectives

Ram Prasad et al. Front Microbiol. .

Abstract

Nanotechnology monitors a leading agricultural controlling process, especially by its miniature dimension. Additionally, many potential benefits such as enhancement of food quality and safety, reduction of agricultural inputs, enrichment of absorbing nanoscale nutrients from the soil, etc. allow the application of nanotechnology to be resonant encumbrance. Agriculture, food, and natural resources are a part of those challenges like sustainability, susceptibility, human health, and healthy life. The ambition of nanomaterials in agriculture is to reduce the amount of spread chemicals, minimize nutrient losses in fertilization and increased yield through pest and nutrient management. Nanotechnology has the prospective to improve the agriculture and food industry with novel nanotools for the controlling of rapid disease diagnostic, enhancing the capacity of plants to absorb nutrients among others. The significant interests of using nanotechnology in agriculture includes specific applications like nanofertilizers and nanopesticides to trail products and nutrients levels to increase the productivity without decontamination of soils, waters, and protection against several insect pest and microbial diseases. Nanotechnology may act as sensors for monitoring soil quality of agricultural field and thus it maintain the health of agricultural plants. This review covers the current challenges of sustainability, food security and climate change that are exploring by the researchers in the area of nanotechnology in the improvement of agriculture.

Keywords: nanoemulsions; nanoencapsulation; nanofertilizer; nanopesticides; nanotechnology; sustainable agriculture.

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Figures

FIGURE 1
FIGURE 1
Number of documents on scopus.com with the search term “Nano and (food or agriculture). The hits were grouped annually. Accessed date: March 15, 2017.
FIGURE 2
FIGURE 2
World market of nanotechnology by applications (A) and regions (B). Source of data: Helmut Kaiser Consultancy (hkc22.com), Accessed date: March 15, 2017.
FIGURE 3
FIGURE 3
Potential applications of nanotechnology representing the consequences of nanoparticles in sustainable agriculture.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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