Nano fertilizers: New vistas towards sustainable agriculture and climate change mitigation: A review

To ensure the food and nutritional security of the burgeoning global population, food production needs to be doubled in developing countries by 2050. Currently, 30-40% of agriculture production predominantly relies on chemical fertilizers. Precise crop nutrition, low nutrient efficiency, maintaining soil fertility, less damage to soil flora and minimal environmental footprint are the major challenges in modern agriculture. Recent developments in the application of nanotechnology to produce agriculture inputs emerged as a sustainable solution for addressing the challenges in modern intensive agriculture by replacing synthetic bulk fertilizers with their nanoparticle size (<100 nm), superior properties and smart delivery system. Nano fertilizers had the potential to fulfill the requirements of plant nutrition along with imparting sustainability in crop production without compromising the yield of the crops. Some of the current research studies have been reviewed in this paper with citation and these results showed that nano fertilizers have a substantial effect on plant growth, development and physiological parameters including chlorophyll content and photosynthetic activity, it depends on their composition, method and time of application. Their enhanced nutrient use efficiency, correlated with mitigating greenhouse gas emissions. Hence evolving as a cutting-edge approach for sustainable agriculture in climate change is enlightened in this review.