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Nano-enabled strategies to enhance biological nitrogen fixation

Nature Nanotechnology volume 18, pages 688–691 (2023)Cite this article

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Increasing the capacity of biological nitrogen fixation (BNF) is an effective strategy to enhance food security while simultaneously reducing the carbon and nitrogen footprint of agriculture. Nanotechnology offers several pathways to enhance BNF successfully.

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Fig. 1: Nanotechnology-based BNF enhancement strategies.

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Acknowledgements

Funding support from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under the Marie Sklodowska-Curie FRIAS COFUND Fellowship Program for Junior and Senior Researchers, Phase 2 (grant agreement no. 754340) and via the NanoSolveIT project (grant agreement no. 814572) and the BBSRC Sustainable Agriculture Research Innovation Club grant (grant no. BB/R021716/1). The Royal Society International Exchange Programs (grant nos. 1853690 and 2122860), the National Key R&D Program of China (grant nos. 2017YFD0801103 and 2017YFD0801300), and the 111 project of the Education Ministry of China (grant no. B18053) the National Natural Science Foundation (grant no. 32130081) are also acknowledged. T.L.O'K., J.C.W., and C.L.H. acknowledge the support from the National Science Foundation under grant no. CHE-2001611, the NSF Center for Sustainable Nanotechnology. The CSN is part of the Centers for Chemical Innovation Program.

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Author notes

  1. These authors contributed equally: Mingshu Li, Li Gao.

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Resources and Environmental Sciences, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Mingshu Li & Yukui Rui

  2. Department of Environmental Science and Engineering, University of Science and Technology of China, Hefei, China

    Mingshu Li & Peng Zhang

  3. State Key Laboratory for Biology of Plant Disease and Insect Pests, Institute of Plant Protection, Chinese Academy of Agricultural Sciences, Beijing, China

    Li Gao

  4. Department of Analytical Chemistry, The Connecticut Agricultural Experiment Station, New Haven, CT, USA

    Jason C. White

  5. Department of Chemistry, University of Minnesota, Minneapolis, MN, USA

    Christy L. Haynes & Tana L. O’Keefe

  6. School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, Edgbaston, Birmingham, UK

    Sami Ullah, Zhiling Guo, Iseult Lynch & Peng Zhang

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  1. Mingshu Li
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  10. Peng Zhang
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to Jason C. White, Yukui Rui or Peng Zhang.

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Li, M., Gao, L., White, J.C. et al. Nano-enabled strategies to enhance biological nitrogen fixation. Nat. Nanotechnol. 18, 688–691 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-023-01392-5

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