The Green New Deal requires a profound transformation of the agricultural sector, which will have to become more sustainable and ensure universal access to healthy food. Thus, it will be essential to introduce radical technological innovations. Nanotechnologies have the potential to produce a significant boost to the improvement of the food system. Within this context, in the next years, a strong challenge will need to be faced regarding developing new and more efficient uses of nutrients in agriculture, being the nutrient use efficiency (NUE) paramount in sustaining high crop productivity without depleting biodiversity, and altering both the natural and agricultural systems. Nutrients leaching causes environmental pollution and water eutrophication, while nutrient excess favors pest and weed widespread. Therefore, it will be mandatory to improve plant nutrition efficiency without affecting agricultural productivity and economic sustainability. A promising alternative consists of the introduction of the so-called nanomaterial enhanced fertilizers and plant growth stimulators. Such innovation includes nanotechnological solutions that can improve nutrient delivery for a more finely tuned, accurate, and saving-resources distribution of nutrients. This review provides a critical view of the latest advances in nanofertilizer research, mainly referring to nano-hydroxyapatite, silica nanoparticles, and chitosan-derived nanostructures.

Nowadays sustainable nanotechnological strategies to improve the efficiency of conventional agricultural practices are of utmost importance. As a matter of fact, the increasing use of productive factors in response to the growing food demand plays an important role in determining the environmental impact of agriculture. In this respect, low-efficiency conventional practices are becoming obsolete. On the other hand, the exploitation of nanoscaled systems for the controlled delivery of fertilizers, pesticides and herbicides shows great potential towards the development of sustainable, efficient and resilient agricultural processes, while promoting food security. In this context, lignin − especially in the form of its nanostructures − can play an important role as sustainable biomaterial for nano-enabled agricultural applications. In this review, we present and discuss the current advancements in the preparation of lignin nanoparticles for the controlled release of pesticides, herbicides, and fertilizers, as well as the latest findings in terms of plant response to their application. Special attention has been paid to the state-of-the-art literature concerning the release performance of these lignin-based nanomaterials, whose efficiency is compared with the conventional approaches. Finally, the major challenges and the future scenarios of lignin-based nano-enabled agriculture are considered.

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