Waste valorization by nanotechnology approaches for sustainable crop protection: a mini review

Abstract

Agri-food waste management represent for several supply-chains a pending issue, since most of the lignocellulosic biomasses produced by the agricultural practices are often intended for energy production, due to their high disposal costs. Nanotechnology could represent a sustainable way to valorise agricultural waste by extracting highly performing nanomaterials and reusing them as nanocarriers or nanopesticides to protect crops. Cellulose and lignin, which are the main component of plant residues display antimicrobial properties when reduced to their nanosized forms, being able to act as innovative tools to counteract plant pathogens, both bacterial and fungal ones. In particularly cellulose can be extracted from different matrices to obtain cellulose nanocrystals (CNC), while lignin is often reduced in nanoparticles (LNP). In this mini review the current and most recent results in terms of antimicrobial activities against plant pathogens by waste-based lignocellulosic nanomaterial are showed.