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Nanobiochar-Based Formulations for Sustained Release of Agrochemicals in Precision Agriculture Practices

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Handbook of Green and Sustainable Nanotechnology

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Abstract

The modern agricultural practices intensively use agrochemicals to increase crop yield resulting into hike in cost of farming. Fertilizers are one of the major agrochemicals used to boost crop yield. However, a significant amount of applied chemical fertilizers in the fields is lost due to various abiotic and biotic factors including photolysis, volatilization, leaching, hydrolysis and microbial immobilization. These factors reduce the nutrient use efficiency (NUE) and increase the frequency of fertilizer application. Current agricultural practices are ineffective at concurrently boosting nutrient use efficiency and agriculture productivity. The losses of fertilizers at ground level may be minimized by controlling the nutrient release kinetics through anchoring the nutrient with an appropriate porous carrier material.

Slow-release fertilizers (SRFs) smartly deliver nutrients to the plants at a relatively slow rate for better synchronization of nutrient requirements during plant growth with minimal harm to the environment. Nanobiochar (N-BC)-based slow-release fertilizer is an effective, economic, robust, and environment friendly approach to improve nutrient use efficiency (NUE) of plant. Neat N-BC has also been used as a carrier for targeted delivery of agrochemicals in a few studies; the same opens a research opportunity to be taken up in the offing. Hence, N-BC can play a vital role in sustainable agriculture practices. This chapter gives an overview of synthesis, characteristics and characterization of biochar-based nanoformulation for agricultural applications including sustained release of agrochemicals. Aspects such as the effect of biochar-based nanoformulation on soil health (heavy metal and agrochemicals immobilization), plant growth and yield improvement have been included in the discussion.

Future studies may focus on the development of novel, efficient, economical, robust, viable, and eco-friendly smart N-BC based fertilizers.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India

    Mansi Sheokand, Karuna Jain & Rahul Kumar Dhaka

  2. Department of Botany and Plant Physiology (Environmental Science), CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India

    Vineeta Rana

  3. Department of Chemistry Sanatan Dharm (PG) College (Muzaffarnagar), Maa Shakumbhari University, Saharanpur, India

    Sarita Dhaka

  4. Department of Microbiology, College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India

    Anuj Rana

  5. Centre for Bio-Nanotechnology, CCS Haryana Agricultural University, Hisar, India

    Anuj Rana & Rahul Kumar Dhaka

  6. Biophysics Unit, College of Basic Sciences & Humanities, G.B. Pant University of Agriculture & Technology, Pantnagar, India

    Krishna Pal Singh

  7. Vice Chancellor’s Secretariat, Mahatma Jyotiba Phule Rohilkhand University, Bareilly, India

    Krishna Pal Singh

Authors
  1. Mansi Sheokand
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  2. Karuna Jain
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  3. Vineeta Rana
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  4. Sarita Dhaka
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  5. Anuj Rana
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  6. Krishna Pal Singh
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  7. Rahul Kumar Dhaka
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Correspondence to Rahul Kumar Dhaka .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Chemistry, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar National Institute of, Jalandhar, Punjab, India

    Uma Shanker

  2. Chemistry and EVSC, New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark, NJ, USA

    Chaudhery Mustansar Hussain

  3. Malaviya National Institute of Technolog, Jaipur, Rajasthan, India

    Manviri Rani

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Sheokand, M. et al. (2023). Nanobiochar-Based Formulations for Sustained Release of Agrochemicals in Precision Agriculture Practices. In: Shanker, U., Hussain, C.M., Rani, M. (eds) Handbook of Green and Sustainable Nanotechnology. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69023-6_109-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-69023-6_109-1

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