Era connecting nanotechnology with agricultural sustainability: issues and challenges

The key to promoting good health and livelihood is easy to access sufficient quantities of safe and nutritious food. Modern agriculture faces many obstacles as the population is growing exponentially and the rate of food production is unable to keep up. Additionally, to maintain ecological balance, sustainability must be practiced and damage to the environment should be controlled. As a solution to all these problems, nanotechnology has come forward to produce a variety of nanomaterials that assist in agriculture, i.e., nano-pesticides, nano-fertilizers, nano-emulsions, etc. This review focuses on the union of these two disciplines, which will ensure great advancement. Agri-nanotechnology, a new field is born. It provides a detailed overview of certain widely used and important nanomaterials in modern agriculture while elaborating on their application. Agrochemicals can be improved by nanomaterials in terms of efficacy, accuracy, and specific targeting. Through smart and precision agricultural technologies, it is possible to reduce the amount and improve the efficiency of agrochemicals. Advantages include increased sustainability and cost and time efficiency, whereas disadvantages such as potential toxicity and environmental damage still need to be investigated. Through this review, we hope to truly explore the potential for advancement in agri-nanotechnology with new-age nanomaterials, while discussing the advantages and disadvantages of the same. This is the modern era—an era of connecting technology and agriculture for better output and higher efficiency. © 2022, The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.