Title:Amphiphilic Copolymer-based Pesticide Nanoformulations for Better
Crop Protection: Advances and Future Need
Volume: 3
Issue: 5
Author(s): Dhruba Jyoti Sarkar*, Kumelachew Mulu Loha, Totan Adak, Parshant Kaushik, Pushpendra Koli, Sujan Majumder, Dinesh Kumar Yadav, Arnab Roy Chowdhury, Anu Kumari, Braj Bhusan Singh, Virendra Singh Rana, Jitendra Kumar and Najam Akhtar Shakil*
Affiliation:
- ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India
- ICAR-Central Inland Fisheries Research Institute,
Kolkata, 700120, India
- ICAR-Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi, 110012, India
Keywords:
Amphiphilic copolymer, nanoformulation, pesticides, crop protection, biopolymers, agriculture.
Abstract: Amphiphilic copolymers (ACPs) are widely recognized due to their self-organizing
micellar characteristics in an aqueous medium and their extensive application potential in bioactive
molecule delivery. However, their use in agriculture is still limited with some scattered research
studies, especially on the delivery of pesticides for crop protection. Hence, the present
study comprehensively summarizes these research findings mainly focusing on synthesis, selfassembly,
and release properties of pesticide nanoformulations prepared using poly(ethylene glycol)
(PEG)-based ACPs. PEG-based ACPs are synthesized using linker molecules through a simple
esterification reaction in the presence of an acid catalyst or an enzyme. However, multistep
reactions are noticed in the synthesis of ACPs employing biopolymers, like chitosan-based ACPs.
On spontaneous emulsification, ACPs develop nanomicelles (~10-300 nm), and their micellar
characteristics are highly dependent on the nature of the blocks. The polymeric micellar barrier of
ACPs also leads to the slow release of entrapped pesticide molecules from these nanomicelles
with diffusion as the dominant release mechanism. Hence, the field appraisal of these ACPs-based
pesticide nanoformulations has shown reduced pesticide doses as compared to the conventional
formulations. However, despite these stated advantages, ACPs-based pesticide nanoformulations
are yet to reach their full potential, which might be due to several key researchable gaps, like a
lack of ACPs with high pesticide loading capacity, lack of biosafety data, environmental fate details,
etc. The use of ACPs is still gaining pace in formulating pesticides and being proven as a
smart material for targeted pesticide delivery to attain sustainable agriculture with a promise to
reduce environmental hazards due to pesticide application.