Encapsulation with Natural Polymers to Improve the Properties of Biostimulants in Agriculture

Encapsulation in agriculture today is practically focused on agrochemicals such as pesticides, herbicides, fungicides, or fertilizers to enhance the protective or nutritive aspects of the entrapped active ingredients. However, one of the most promising and environmentally friendly technologies, biostimulants, is hardly explored in this field. Encapsulation of biostimulants could indeed be an excellent means of counteracting the problems posed by their nature: they are easily biodegradable, and most of them run off through the soil, losing most of the compounds, thus becoming inaccessible to plants. In this respect, encapsulation seems to be a practical and profitable way to increase the stability and durability of biostimulants under field conditions. This review paper aims to provide researchers working on plant biostimulants with a quick overview of how to get started with encapsulation. Here we describe different techniques and offer protocols and suggestions for introduction to polymer science to improve the properties of biostimulants for future agricultural applications.

Descrição

Funding Information: This work was partially supported by the project PID2019-105391GB-C21/AEI/10.13039/501100011033; Programa Operacional Madeira 14–20, Portugal 2020; and the European Union through the European Regional Development Fund, grant number M1420-01-0145-FEDER-000011 (CASBio). Publisher Copyright: © 2022 by the authors.

Palavras-chave

agriculture alginate biostimulants carrageenans chitosan encapsulation guar gum natural biopolymers xanthan gum Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics Ecology Plant Science