CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

The excessive and indiscriminate use of synthetic agrochemicals and toxic fumigants has become essential to maximize the agricultural production worldwide. Despite their beneficial roles in the field and during storage, they produce environmental pollution, increasing pesticide/herbicide resistance and destruction of beneficial insects, and placing the health of producers and consumers at risk. This scenario has enabled the development of a new scientific approaches focused on alternatives and eco-friendly and safer forms of pest management including the use of botanical products such as plant extracts and essential oils (EOs) with insecticidal action. The application of EOs for pest control presents several advantages: low toxicity and low persistence; biodegradability; high selectivity; no harmful to people or crops; and also exhibit low environmental impact during and after use. Unfortunately, EOs are biologically unstable since they are easily degraded under the action of pH, oxygen, light, and moderate temperatures. Generally, they present low aqueous solubility and high volatility.In this sense, nanotechnology represents a potential solution, loading EOs in nanostructured systems. The use of biopolymers as nanocarriers not only provides the controlled release of the active ingredient (AI), but also offers the following benefits: biodegradability, biocompatibility, environmental safety, low toxicity and competitive production costs. This review aims at describing the most recent preparation techniques and characterization based on EOs-loaded bio-nanomaterials. Also, this review highlights studies on novel bio-nanoformulations and their potential roles in agricultural practices to promote sustainable and eco-friendly cultivation. Finally, we summarized the commercial challenges and limitations related to these promising bio-nanoformulations.