Advances in controlled release systems for sustainable crop production: a review of nano-, micro-, and macro-formulations

The high necessity to develop novel and optimized technologies for crop production is very high due to the exponential growth in term of world population of the last years. In this field a novel use of fertilizers and pesticides can ameliorate the life conditions around the world due to the higher productivity with lower losses and consequent less environmental problems related to pollution. To address these challenges a very promising solution is constituted by devices able to control and sustain the release of fertilizers and pesticide optimizing their efficacy preserving the environment. In the last decade a lot of efforts, in terms of research, were dedicated to the development of smart devices that can address those issues maintaining also low costs and easy production processes. In this review we will point the attention on devices that can be used as slow release systems for fertilizers and/or pesticides. In details strong consideration will be devoted to their formulation to increase the knowledge on the high number of possibilities behind these novel and smart devices.