Nanotechnology for sustainable agriculture: advances, applications and emerging role of multiomics

While agricultural modernization has driven significant agricultural advancements, it has also fuelled agricultural pollution despite agriculture being the prime beneficiary of technological innovations more than any other sector. Working at the nanoscale (1-100 nm), nanoagriculture offers revolutionary biotechnological and agri-industrial applications. As 'magic bullets', nanoparticles can encapsulate herbicides, fertilizers, pesticides or even genes, and deliver directly to plant cell organelles for controlled release. Nano bio-sensors complement this approach by tracking plant growth, monitoring environmental changes and real-time pest detection. A multi-level understanding of plant biological networks is essential to utilize engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) effectively for sustainable agriculture. Recent advances have shifted ENM-plant interaction studies from single-endpoint assays to high-throughput omics approaches. In this context, systems biology is increasingly being applied to uncover the molecular responses of plants to ENM exposure, where the integration of multi-omics datasets enables the identification of regulatory pathways and complex interaction networks underlying plant adaptation and resilience. Keeping this in view, the present review explores recent breakthroughs in nanotechnology-driven agrochemicals that are revolutionizing the agricultural systems through multiomics approaches.