Abstract
Nanotechnology-based approaches have demonstrated encouraging results for sustainable agriculture production, particularly in the field of fertilizers and pesticide innovation. It is essential to evaluate the economic and environmental benefits of these nanoformulations. Here we estimate the potential revenue gain/loss associated with nanofertilizer and/or nanopesticide use, calculate the greenhouse gas emissions change from the use of nanofertilizer and identify feasible applications and critical issues. The cost–benefit analysis demonstrates that, while current nanoformulations show promise in increasing the net revenue from crops and lowering the environmental impact, further improving the efficiency of nanoformulations is necessary for their widescale adoption. Innovating nanoformulation for targeted delivery, lowering the greenhouse gas emissions associated with nanomaterials and minimizing the content of nanomaterials in the derived nanofertilizers or pesticides can substantially improve both economic and environmental benefits.
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Data availability
The authors declare that the data (including MATLAB analysis) supporting the findings of this study are available as Excel spreadsheets alongside the manuscript and its Supplementary Information (Supplementary Tables 1–3) and FAO website (https://www.fao.org/faostat/en/#data). Source data are provided with this paper.
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Acknowledgements
This work was financially supported by the US Department of Agriculture (CA-R-PPA-5139-CG).
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Y.S., A.A.K. and D.J. were responsible for conceptualization, methodology, data collecting and analysis, and writing (original and revised draft). Y.S., P.R., C.R. and D.J. were responsible for project administration and supervision. X.Z., H.M., T.X., H.L., J.E.M. and Y.Z. were responsible for data collecting and analysis, and writing (original draft) and editing (revised draft).
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Nature Food thanks Thilo Hofmann, Dengjun Wang and Jie Zhou for their contribution to the peer review of this work.
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Supplementary Information
Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Tables 1–3.
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MATLAB code for Figs. 2 and 3.
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Source Data Fig. 1
Food production data from FAOSTAT.
Source Data Fig. 2
MATLAB surface plot raw file.
Source Data Fig. 3
Maximum revenue and its corresponding fertilizer dosage date.
Source Data Fig. 4
GHG emission reduction data.
Source Data Fig. 5
Data on the efficiency and cost of nanopesticides versus non-nano.
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Su, Y., Zhou, X., Meng, H. et al. Cost–benefit analysis of nanofertilizers and nanopesticides emphasizes the need to improve the efficiency of nanoformulations for widescale adoption. Nat Food 3, 1020–1030 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00647-z
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43016-022-00647-z
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