# Nanopesticides by Design: A Review of Delivery Platforms, Environmental Fate, and Standards for Safe and Sustainable Crop Protection

## TL;DR

This paper reviews nanopesticide design, environmental behavior, and safety challenges to guide sustainable crop protection.

## Contribution

A Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design roadmap is proposed to address gaps in nanopesticide risk assessment and adoption.

## Key findings

- Nanopesticide carriers influence AIng release and environmental fate in soil-water systems.
- Current risk assessment methods fail to account for particle stability and exposure dynamics.
- Low-hazard materials and predictable degradation are prioritized for sustainable design.

## Abstract

Nanopesticides are pesticide formulations in which intentionally designed nanoscale carriers shape how an active ingredient (AIng) is deposited, transformed, and released. These systems can improve retention and efficacy, but carrier complexity introduces challenges: nanomaterials can transform in real soil–water matrices, reshaping exposure and risk. These processes are hard to quantify because test protocols and risk assessment frameworks for nanopesticides remain underdeveloped. In this review, we relate design choices across major carrier families—including polymer and lipid particles, nanoemulsions, porous inorganic carriers, and bio-based nanomaterials—to transformations in soil–water systems. We then connect these transformations to ecotoxicological evidence across key non-target taxa. We also address a central “measurement gap” in current risk assessment. Many standard tests were developed for dissolved chemicals. As a result, they do not capture (i) particle stability in realistic matrices, (ii) particle-bound versus dissolved (and ion-released) forms, or (iii) time-resolved exposure. Finally, we propose a Safe-and-Sustainable-by-Design roadmap that prioritizes low-hazard materials, predictable degradation, life-cycle thinking, and staged data generation to enable scalable, field-relevant adoption.