The agricultural industry is currently facing challenges of food production for the expanding human population. This will be worsened in the future by the negative impacts of climate change. The obstacles can be overcome by increasing the productivity of the available agricultural lands. The conventional fertilizers are, however, not very efficient in delivering nutrients to the plants. Formulation of nanofertilizers based on tiny particles (< 100 nm), prepared from common organic and inorganic sources, is a ground-breaking discovery that can ensure sustainable agriculture in an eco-friendly manner. Their unique properties make them effective at low concentrations. They can supply nutrients and help the plants withstand biotic and abiotic stress factors. This proves their efficiency over traditional fertilizers. However, they have certain drawbacks. Their high reactivity can be a source of toxicity to the plants as well as animals. Thus, this emerging field has high potentialities but requires extensive research.
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According to reports, the escalating population will push up the demand for food supply by as much as 70% even before 2050 is reached (Mandal, 2021). Currently, the agricultural sector is under the pressure of two additional factors – availability of lands for cultivation of crops and global water crisis. The situation will be aggravated in the future by the changing climate and its negative impacts on agricultural production (Hussein and Abou-Baker, 2018). Under these circumstances, the productivity will largely be dependent on the efficiency of the fertilizers being used (Zulfiqar et al., 2019). Accordingly, the fertilizer consumption has augmented in the recent years to meet the growing pressures of increasing food production. Fatima et al. (2021) reported that the fertilizer use has shot up by almost 13 folds from 1950 to 2020. However, continuous use of traditional fertilizers has resulted in several environmental issues like air pollution, water pollution, eutrophication of aquatic bodies and degradation of the soil quality (Verma et al., 2022). Furthermore, the economic burden of synthetic fertilizers decreases the profit margins of the cultivators and inflates the cost of agricultural products (Zulfiqar et al., 2019).
Despite the increased utilization of conventional fertilizers, the agricultural output has not been boosted enough. This is because of the tendency of chemical fertilizers to get immobilized in the soil depriving the plants of the required amounts of nutrients. Additionally, they may leach to the groundwater causing contamination or may be washed off by the rain to nearby aquatic bodies causing eutrophication (Bindraban et al., 2020). The problem tends to worsen under the present conditions of indiscriminate use of synthetic fertilizers (Bindraban et al., 2020). According to several workers, the nutrient utilization efficiency or NUE of the conventional fertilizers is very poor (El-Saadony et al., 2021; Verma et al., 2022). This calls for improvisation of the agricultural sector for ensuring the future food security while keeping in mind the production costs and environmental safety.
The recent years have witnessed tremendous growth of research on nanofertilizers. They are based on the use of nanoparticles that differ from their source bulk materials. Their miniature size, high surface-to-volume ratio and excessive power of ionization makes them tremendously reactive (Shang et al., 2019). Additionally, their resistance to high temperatures, pH fluctuations and several chemicals make them stable. Furthermore, they can be readily absorbed making them highly effective. Their efficiency can be multiplied several times by combining them with agrochemicals. This can be achieved by encapsulating them or adsorption or utilizing ionic bonds for attaching them to the nanomatrix of the active elements of nanoformulations (Pandey, 2018).