New Insight of Nanotechnology in Combating Plant Stresses: Scope and Potential Applications

Nanotechnology is a fast growing field of biotechnology that has become an important and a favorite tool for researchers. The major advantage that nanotechnology serves is its interdisciplinary nature/utility as nanotechnology finds applications in every possible field, whether it is food safety and packaging, drug delivery, pharmaceuticals, defense, agriculture, environment, and several others. This chapter emphasizes on the benefits of nanotechnology that could act as a boon in overcoming the major crop losses due to the plant stresses; either biotic or abiotic plant stress. Biotic stress is the outcome of the biological agents like herbivores, weeds, nematodes, pests, and many others that lead to the damage and destruction of the major crop production at a large scale. On the other hand, the abiotic stress occurs due to the temperature variations, UV rays, drought, floods, heavy metal contamination, salinity, etc. This chapter focuses on the development of such novel and advance strategies with the help of nanotechnology-based components, either in the form of nanofertilizers, nanoinsecticides, nanocapsules, and various other elements that can save a large amount of crop plants from the severe damages due to these stresses. Nanotechnology can also enhance the crop production by the use of nanoparticle-based fertilizers, herbicides, and other such compounds. This chapter mainly focuses on utilizing the tools and techniques of nanotechnology in agro industries as well as in the farm fields by developing such nanoparticle-based compounds that can effectively curb these stress developing agents in the field without affecting the main crop plants.