Applied Agriculture Sciences
Agriculture and food sciences | Online ISSN: 3066-3407
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Volume 3 Number 1 2025
REVIEWS (Open Access)
Nano-Fertilizers and Bio-Fertilizers for Sustainable Agriculture: Bridging Nutrient Efficiency, Stress Resilience, and Unresolved Safety Questions
Mamar Laeeq Zia2, Raja Ahmad Ali 3, Qudrat Ullah4, Muhammad Shahid Mumtaz5 , Abdul Fatah A Samad6, Muhammad Sajad1*
Applied Agriculture Sciences 3 (1) 1-13 https://doi.org/10.25163/agriculture.3110393
Submitted: 30 September 2025 Revised: 09 December 2025 Accepted: 13 December 2025 Published: 14 December 2025
Abstract
Global agriculture, it seems fair to say, is running up against limits that the twentieth century's chemical-input model was never built to handle. Feeding a population approaching 9.6–10 billion by mid-century without further degrading soil and water resources has pushed researchers toward nanotechnology as a plausible, if not entirely settled, alternative. This narrative review draws together evidence on nano- and bio-fertilizers, tracing how nutrient carriers engineered at the 1–100 nm scale alter plant physiology from germination onward. Conventional fertilizers, notoriously, lose 40–90% of applied nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium to leaching, runoff, and volatilization; nano-formulations appear to narrow that gap through controlled release and enhanced tissue penetration. The review moves through several interlocking themes—germination triggering via seed-coat penetration, nutrient-use-efficiency gains relative to bulk fertilizers, photosynthetic and metabolic fortification, and resilience against salinity, heat, and flooding stress—before turning to bio-fertilizers and their hybrid nano-biofertilizer counterparts, which combine microbial nitrogen fixation with nanoscale protective encapsulation. Commercial formulations already on the market are also surveyed, revealing a industry that has, in places, outpaced the safety literature. Concerns around phytotoxicity, bioaccumulation, and disrupted soil microbiomes are treated not as footnotes but as central, still-unresolved questions. Taken as a whole, the evidence suggests genuine promise tempered by real uncertainty, and the review closes by outlining where standardized characterization and long-term field validation remain most urgently needed.
Keywords: Nano-fertilizers; bio-fertilizers; nutrient use efficiency; abiotic stress tolerance; sustainable agriculture; nanotoxicity; precision nutrition
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