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Cost–benefit analysis of nanofertilizers and nanopesticides emphasizes the need to improve the efficiency of nanoformulations for widescale adoption

Nature Food volume 3, pages 1020–1030 (2022)Cite this article

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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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Fig. 1: Guaranteeing the supply of fruit, vegetables and non-food crops while providing sufficient grains.
Fig. 2: Efficient nanofertilizers can significantly reduce fertilizer dosage for the same corn yield compared with that of conventional fertilizers.
Fig. 3
Fig. 4: GHG emission reduction by using efficient nanofertilizers.
Fig. 5: Costs and benefits of nanopesticides.
Fig. 6: Schematic illustration of how nanopesticides potentially combat pathogens in plants (that is, fruit trees infected by xylem- and/or phylem-resident pathogens).

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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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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Utah Water Research Laboratory, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Utah State University, Logan, UT, USA

    Yiming Su & Joan E. McLean

  2. State Key Laboratory of Pollution Control and Resource Reuse, National Facility Agriculture Engineering Technology Research Center, Tongji University, Shanghai, China

    Xuefei Zhou & Yalei Zhang

  3. CAS Key Laboratory for Biomedical Effects of Nanomaterials and Nanosafety and CAS Center for Excellence in Nanoscience, National Center for Nanoscience and Technology, Beijing, China

    Huan Meng

  4. Division of NanoMedicine, Department of Medicine, California NanoSystems Institute, David Geffen School of Medicine University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    Tian Xia

  5. Department of Chemical and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Haizhou Liu

  6. Department of Botany and Plant Sciences, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Philippe Rolshausen

  7. Department of Microbiology and Plant Pathology, University of California, Riverside, CA, USA

    Caroline Roper

  8. Bren School of Environmental Science and Management, University of California Santa Barbara, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Arturo A. Keller

  9. Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of California, Los Angeles, CA, USA

    David Jassby

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  1. Yiming Su
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Contributions

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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Correspondence to Yiming Su or David Jassby.

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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 Information

Supplementary Figs. 1–4 and Tables 1–3.

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Supplementary Software

MATLAB code for Figs. 2 and 3.

Source data

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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