Agrochemicals have
supported the development of the agricultural
economy and national population over the past century. However, excessive
applications of agrochemicals pose threats to the environment and
human health. In the last decades, nanoparticles (NPs) have been a
hot topic in many fields, especially in agriculture, because of their
physicochemical properties. Nevertheless, the prevalent methods for
fabricating NPs are uneconomical and involve toxic reagents, hindering
their extensive applications in the agricultural sector. In contrast,
inspired by biological exemplifications from microbes and plants,
their extract and biomass can act as a reducing and capping agent
to form NPs without any toxic reagents. NPs synthesized through these
bioinspired routes are cost-effective, ecofriendly, and high performing.
With
the development of nanotechnology, biosynthetic NPs (bioNPs) have
been proven to be a substitute strategy for agrochemicals and traditional
NPs in heavy-metal remediation of soil, promotion of plant growth,
and management of plant disease with less toxicity and higher performance.
Therefore, bioinspired synthesis of NPs will be an inevitable trend
for sustainable development in agricultural fields. This critical
review will demonstrate the bioinspired synthesis of NPs and discuss
the influence of bioNPs on agricultural soil, crop growth, and crop
diseases compared to chemical NPs or agrochemicals.