To ensure food safety, the current agricultural development has put forward requirements for improving nutritional quality and reducing the harmful accumulation of agricultural chemicals. Nano-enabled sustainable agriculture and food security have been increasingly explored as a new research frontier. Nano-fertilizers show the potential to be more efficient than traditional fertilizers, reducing the amount used while ensuring plant uptake, supplying the inorganic nutrients needed by plants, and improving the process by which plants produce organic nutrients. Other agricultural uses of nanotechnology affect crop productivity and nutrient quality in addition to nano-fertilizers. This article will review the research progress of using nanomaterials to improve nutritional quality in recent years and point out the focus of future research.

Potassium fertilizer is essential to ensure crop production and thus global food supply and safe fertilizer. Potassium resources are mainly located in the Northern Hemisphere, and as a result, there is currently a scarcity of cheap potash and severe soil deficiencies in some areas of the Southern Hemisphere. There is a shift from mined salts to locally available potassium resources. such as silicates containing K, may be an option to improve this situation. The goal of increasing crop productivity and improving quality dictates an increase in potassium availability or a efficient use of potassium. The development of plants that use potassium more efficiently may be a valuable goal for geneticists. Nanomaterials are increasingly used in people's working life as a new type of material, and this technology is gradually being applied in agriculture with a view to increase crop yields and reduce environmental pollution. This paper reviews the applications of common potassium-containing materials and the effects and mechanisms of nano-fertilizers on plants, and also gives an outlook on the future applications of nano-potassium fertilizers in agriculture, and also hopes that it can provide a reference for more researchers working in this field.

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The application of nanomaterials (NMs) in agriculture has become a global concern in recent years. However, studies on their effects on plants are still limited. Here, we conducted a seed germination experiment for 5 days and a hydroponics experiment for 14 days to study the effects of silicon dioxide NMs(nSiO2) and silicon carbide NMs(nSiC) (0,10, 50, 200 mg/L) on rice (Oryza sativa L.). Bulk SiO2 (bSiO2) and sodium silicate (Na2SiO3) were used as controls. The results showed that nSiO2 and nSiC increased the shoot length (11–37%, 6–25%) and root length (17–87%, 59–207%) of germinating seeds, respectively, compared with the control. Similarly, inter-root exposure to nSiO2, bSiO2, and nSiC improved the activity of aboveground catalase (10–55%, 31–34%, and 13–51%) and increased the content of trace elements magnesium, copper, and zinc, thus promoting the photosynthesis of rice. However, Na2SiO3 at a concentration of 200 mg/L reduced the aboveground and root biomass of rice by 27–51% and 4–17%, respectively. This may be because excess silicon not only inhibited the activity of root antioxidant enzymes but also disrupted the balance of mineral elements. This finding provides a new basis for the effect of silica-based NMs promotion on seed germination and rice growth.