Sustainable agriculture is crucial to meet the increasing food demand. Conventional agrochemicals display problems and limitations, and many were cut off due to high environmental impact (91/414/EEC). The potential of multimodal nanomaterials for pest control and plant growth promotion encourages a new green revolution. NanoPesTo aims to develop “smart”, responsive, advanced nanopesticides as sustainable nanoagrochemicals. 

Specifically, NanoPesTo aims to design and develop state-of-the-art hybrid engineered nanomaterials (HENs) for effective pest control in low doses and promoting simultaneously the plant growth. HENs are secondary "smart" nanoarchitectures that are based on inorganic nanoparticles (INPs) of bioessential elements (viz copper, iron, calcium and zinc) and organic active ingredients (AIs). Particularly, as INPs will be used metal oxide and bimetallic nanoparticles that have been previously investigated by us and were found effective against phytopathogens and non-phytotoxic. The AIs are going to be: pelargonic acid (Pe) an approved pesticide; salicylic acid (SA) a main phytohormone; and geraniol (Ge) an essential oil with multiple biological activities. Two different categories of HENs will be developed: Νanocomposites upon direct couplingof INPs with Pe and SA, and Nanocapsules of INPs and AIs. Four factors will be evaluated for the developed HENs based on their physicochemical characterization: inorganic content-ionic release; AIs’ content and release profile; hydrodynamic size; colloidal stability. The toxicity effect of HENs will be evaluated on two main herbivores of tomato (Spodoptera exigua, Tuta absoluta). The photosynthetic efficiency will be in vivo evaluated by a quick, non-invasive, and highly sensitive method. Moreover, the translocation of HENs inside plant tissues after foliar spraying will be studied and the oxidative stress will be in vitro assessed. After all, environmentally friendly multimodal nanoagrochemicals will be proposed.