Agricultural Horizons: Research, Technology and Sustainable Development Vol. 1

Engineered Nanomaterials in Seed Quality Enhancement and Crop Production: Mechanisms, Current Evidence, and Research Needs

Navya Vangala — 2026-09-02

Low nutrient and agrochemical use efficiency remains a persistent constraint in crop production, and interest has grown in whether engineered nanomaterials (ENMs) can improve the precision with which nutrients, protectants and stimulants are delivered to seeds and plants. This chapter reviews the evidence for the use of ENMs in seed quality enhancement, nutrient delivery, crop protection, abiotic stress mitigation and crop monitoring, covering metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, carbon dots, silica nanoparticles and polymer-encapsulated formulations.

The literature was searched systematically and studies were classified by evidence level, from in vitro assays through to commercially available products, so that proof-of-concept findings are not conflated with field-validated performance. Polymer-encapsulated nano-fertilisers have been reported to release nutrients over extended periods and to improve nutrient recovery relative to conventional soluble equivalents in specific crop and soil combinations, although reported gains vary widely and few have been reproduced across seasons or sites. Nano-enabled pesticide formulations can reduce the amount of active ingredient applied while maintaining efficacy under the tested conditions, but effects on beneficial organisms, residues and resistance selection are not well characterised.

Carbon dots have been reported to influence water uptake by seeds, germination rate and photosynthetic parameters, though their properties depend strongly on precursor, synthesis route and purification, and apparent effects can arise from residual molecular fluorophores rather than from the particles themselves. Nanoparticle seed priming has improved germination and vigour indices in aged seed lots in several species, but artificial ageing is not equivalent to natural storage, and short-term germination stimulation should not be reported as extended seed longevity.

Overall, selected ENMs show promise under laboratory, controlled-environment and limited field conditions. Consistency across environments, scalability, long-term environmental and human safety, regulatory feasibility and comparative cost-effectiveness against best available conventional technologies remain insufficiently established. Priorities for future work include minimum characterisation and reporting standards, harmonised experimental controls, independent replication, validated residue methods, multi-season field evaluation and life-cycle assessment.

Saccharum edule Hasskarl as a Potential Indigenous Crop for Food Diversification and Local Livelihoods: A Narrative Review with Implications for Disaster-Prone Areas

Reny Sukmawani — 2026-09-02

Objective: This narrative review evaluates the evidence concerning Saccharum edule Hasskarl as an indigenous food crop, a potential source of local livelihood support, and a component of integrated farming systems, with particular attention to the implications for disaster-prone areas.

Research Design: A targeted narrative review and qualitative synthesis of heterogeneous evidence were conducted.

Methodology: Google Scholar, Crossref, PubMed, and publisher websites were searched from 31 July to 2 August 2026 using combinations of “Saccharum edule”, “terubuk”, and “sayur lilin” with terms related to nutrition, product processing, farming, silage, livestock, integrated farming, food security, disasters, and resilience. Crop-specific literature published from 2017 to July 2026 was prioritised. Earlier or broader sources were included only to establish the food-security and resilience framework. Evidence was appraised according to study design, geographic scope, directness, and independence of replication.

Results: Crop-specific studies show that the edible inflorescence has a measurable proximate composition and can be processed into canned and other formulated food products. Local studies also describe agribusiness-development requirements, crop–livestock integration, and the conversion of stems and leaves into silage. However, the economic evidence is mainly derived from descriptive or case-study designs, and the livestock evidence includes laboratory ensiling and prediction-based analyses rather than extensive controlled feeding trials. No study directly evaluated crop performance or household food-security outcomes during disaster recovery.

Conclusion: Saccharum edule Hasskarl is best regarded as a locally important, underutilised crop with plausible value for food diversification, value addition, and circular use of crop residues. Its contribution to disaster-resilient food systems remains a hypothesis requiring multi-location agronomic trials, dietary and food-safety assessment, representative farm-budget studies, consumer research, and direct evaluation under hazard and recovery conditions.

National Horticultural Crop Production as Influenced by Unconventional Horticultural Practices and Urbanization in Nigeria: A Case Study of Housing Estates in Imo State, Nigeria

Nze, Edward Onuawuchi — 2026-09-02

The advancement of horticultural practices is closely related to human society and culture. Hence, human settlement patterns can be traced from the hunting and gathering practices of the Stone Age to highly technical and sophisticated agricultural methods such as computerised greenhouse nurseries, hydroponics and tissue culture. Although the level of horticultural crop production in developed countries is higher than in developing African countries, particularly Nigeria, contributions to national horticultural crop production arising from unconventional practices associated with urban development patterns are mostly ignored or not recognised, apart from the activities of the National Institute of Horticultural Research (NIHORT), which has the national mandate to research, train and develop all horticultural crops in Nigeria, and a few individual horticulturists engaged in full-time horticultural production. This chapter therefore reports a survey of unconventional horticultural practices in selected housing estates in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria. A total of 40 compounds were sampled from each housing estate, giving a total sample size of 120. The chapter examined development patterns in Nigeria, the importance of horticultural crops, and the identification, distribution and analysis of horticultural crops in the selected estates using simple frequency tables and percentages. The results indicated consistency in the horticultural plants identified among the sampled residential compounds, confirming the existence of unconventional horticultural practices within the estates. However, fruit trees had the highest frequency in all three estates compared with the other categories of horticultural crops. It was therefore recommended that estate dwellers plant more ornamental and vegetable crops while using improved varieties to optimise profit. This is because planting many fruit trees near residential buildings may have long-term negative effects, as expanding underground roots may damage buildings and fences, thereby increasing maintenance costs.

Weed Management in Sunflower: Critical Appraisal of Interference, Herbicide Systems, Integrated Tactics and Broomrape Control

Anita Mahapatra — 2026-09-02

Weed management is a recurrent constraint in sunflower because the crop combines relatively slow early canopy development with a narrow range of selective options for several broad-leaved weeds, while herbicide-tolerant hybrids and parasitic broomrape create additional stewardship problems. This critical narrative review evaluates how weed interference, herbicide timing, crop competitiveness, mechanical and cultural tactics, herbicide-tolerant production systems, and sunflower broomrape management can be combined into durable programmes. Literature published mainly from 2000 to 10 June 2026 was identified through live searches of accessible scholarly indexes, repositories and journal records, with older foundational studies retained where they clarified competition or mechanical control. The evidence consistently shows that early weed interference can markedly depress seed yield and yield components, but the timing and duration of the critical period vary with weed flora, density, environment, crop density and the use of residual herbicides. Pre-emergence herbicides can widen the operational window for later control, although rainfall and soil moisture strongly modify efficacy and crop selectivity. Herbicide-tolerant sunflower improves post-emergence control of difficult broad-leaved weeds and broomrape, yet repeated acetolactate-synthase inhibitor use creates selection pressure, while crop-to-wild gene flow can transfer tolerance traits into weedy sunflower populations. Mechanical hoeing, row-targeted herbicide plus inter-row cultivation, competitive crop stands and rotation can reduce reliance on broadcast herbicides, but their performance is more management-sensitive than single-tool chemical programmes. Broomrape requires a distinct integrated strategy combining host resistance, crop rotation, carefully timed chemistry and surveillance because parasite races and herbicide resistance are evolving. The strongest conclusion is therefore not that one tactic is superior, but that sunflower weed management is most robust when early-season suppression, diversified modes of action, crop competition, non-chemical interventions and seedbank prevention are coordinated at field and rotation scales. Research priorities include multi-environment decision models, resistance-aware programmes, precision intra-row control, long-term seedbank experiments and joint management of ordinary weeds, weedy sunflower and broomrape.

Introgression of Submergence1 (SUB1) Locus into Genetic Background of Modern Rice Varieties through Phenotypic and Genotypic Selection

S. Bharathkumar — 2026-09-02

Rice (Oryza sativa L.) is a primary food source for people in Asia. However, rice varieties developed for desirable agronomic traits are susceptible to both biotic and abiotic stresses. Under stress conditions, the growth of rice plants is weakened, and grain yield subsequently declines to an unacceptable level. In rain-fed rice-growing areas, submergence is an economically important form of water stress. Under rapidly changing climatic conditions associated with continuous warming of the earth’s surface, flooding is becoming an unavoidable constraint to rice cultivation. Therefore, rice breeders have sought to improve popular developed rice varieties for submergence tolerance worldwide by using available, highly efficient stress-tolerance QTLs through conventional methods to manage the negative impact of climate change on rice crops. In the present study, two developed short-duration rice varieties, ADT36 and ADT37, were improved for submergence tolerance at the seedling stage through introgression of the Sub1 locus via conventional methods. These varieties are highly popular in the Cauvery delta region of Tamil Nadu, India. This study was carried out in the net house of Kandaswami Kandar’s College, Tamil Nadu (11.1202ºN, 78.0031°E). In the parental polymorphism study, variation between recipient and donor parents was confirmed at the phenotypic and genotypic levels. In phenotypic selection, the parental lines were differentiated as tolerant or susceptible based on the rate of shoot elongation under submergence conditions. In genotypic selection, an InDel marker located within the Sub1 locus was used to differentiate the parental lines. After hybridisation, submergence-tolerant rice progenies were selected by comparing rice lines with the Sub1 locus in the F₁, BC₁, BC₂ and BC₃ generations under submergence-stress conditions. Tolerant rice progenies were selected solely on the basis of their performance under stress conditions. Finally, the presence of the Sub1 locus in the BC₃F₁ generation was confirmed by PCR amplification using a foreground marker in 7 and 6 rice progenies of ADT36 and ADT37, respectively. These positive progenies were allowed to self-pollinate to produce BC₃F₂ seeds. During the evaluation of near-isogenic lines (NILs), some NILs of both varieties showed stability of the Sub1 locus under stress conditions. Therefore, improved NILs of ADT36 and ADT37 can be used in the Cauvery delta region to enhance rice production under submergence-stress conditions.

Potential and Challenges of Smart Agriculture: A Critical Narrative Review of Evidence, Uneven Outcomes and Structural Constraints

A. Ayandiji — 2026-09-02

Smart agriculture, understood as the integration of sensing, connectivity, data analytics and automated actuation into agricultural decision-making, has been promoted as a route to simultaneous gains in productivity, resource-use efficiency, environmental performance and resilience. The scale of investment and policy attention now attached to the field has outpaced the maturity of the evidence base that supports it. This critical narrative review examines what the accessible peer-reviewed literature actually establishes about the potential of smart agriculture, where claims remain conditional, and which constraints are technical rather than structural. Literature was identified through open scholarly databases and indexes, supplemented by citation searching and authoritative institutional sources, with a final search date of 14 June 2026. Evidence was appraised for design adequacy, measurement validity, external validity, geographical representation and the correspondence between the claim made and the data supporting it.

Four findings emerge. Capability at the sensing and analytics layers has advanced considerably faster than demonstrated capability at the decision and outcome layers, so that reported technical performance frequently fails to translate into measurable agronomic or economic gain. Input savings are the most consistently reported benefit, whereas yield effects are small and inconsistent, and profitability evidence remains weak, largely modelled and concentrated in mechanised, high-income systems. Adoption is highly technology-specific rather than uniform, and the technologies with the strongest evidence of uptake are not those with the strongest evidence of environmental benefit. Distributional outcomes are shaped less by technical performance than by connectivity, farm scale, data governance and market structure, which together determine who can use these systems at all.

The synthesis indicates that the principal constraints on smart agriculture are no longer predominantly sensor or algorithm limitations but the absence of independent outcome evaluation, the weakness of interoperability and data-governance arrangements, and the structural exclusion of small-scale producers. Research priorities are identified accordingly, with emphasis on multi-season field evaluation against realistic counterfactuals, transparent reporting of model transferability, and the design of governance instruments that distribute value rather than merely enable data flow.

Stocking Density Optimization for Sustainable Culture of the Indian Spiny Loach (Lepidocephalichthys thermalis): Implications for Growth, Physiological Performance and Sustainable Aquaculture

R. Bhargavi — 2026-09-02

Stocking density is an important management factor in intensive aquaculture because it influences growth, feed utilisation, survival, physiological condition and resource-use efficiency. The present study evaluated the effects of five stocking densities on the production performance, physiological responses and resource utilisation of the Indian spiny loach, Lepidocephalichthys thermalis, during a 90-day outdoor tank-culture experiment. Fish were stocked at 500, 750, 1000, 1250 and 1500 fish per 0.2 m³, with three replicate tanks per treatment. Stocking density significantly affected growth, feed utilisation, survival, physiological stress, antioxidant defence, digestive enzyme activity, body composition, energy allocation and water productivity (P<0.05). The lowest density (500 fish/0.2 m³) produced the highest final body weight (0.40 ± 0.004 g), weight gain (0.262 ± 0.0049 g), weight gain percentage (187.5 ± 3.535%), specific growth rate (1.27 ± 0.012% day⁻¹), feed conversion efficiency (70.6 ± 0.353%) and protein efficiency ratio (1.945 ± 0.0356), together with the highest survival (98.90 ± 0.141%) and antioxidant and digestive enzyme activities. In contrast, increasing stocking density progressively reduced individual growth and feed efficiency while increasing cortisol concentration from 41.07 ± 0.063 to 73.56 ± 0.678 ng/mL. Final biomass increased with density, reaching 353.9 ± 2.757 g at 1500 fish/0.2 m³, while water-use productivity also increased. However, energy allocation to growth declined from 48.4 ± 0.636% to 29.1 ± 0.353% across the density gradient. Overall, 500 fish/0.2 m³ provided the best balance of individual growth, survival, feed efficiency and physiological condition, whereas higher densities increased biomass and water-use productivity at the expense of individual performance and physiological condition.

Stress-protective Effect of Silica Nanosol-based Foliar Fertilizers in Winter Wheat Cultivation

M. D. Aksylenko — 2026-09-02

Moisture deficiency adversely affects plant growth and physiological processes and can reduce crop productivity. Silicon-containing foliar treatments have been investigated as a means of improving plant water relations, photosynthetic activity, and tolerance to abiotic stress. However, the stress-protective effects of the specific silica nanosol-based foliar compositions evaluated in this study on winter wheat under moisture-deficit conditions required further assessment. This study evaluated the stress-protective effect of silica nanosol-based foliar compositions on winter wheat under simulated soil moisture deficiency. The work included the preparation and characterisation of silica nanosols obtained by high-speed dispersion with ultrasound treatment and by hydrolysis of tetraethoxysilane. The resulting nanosols were used to prepare foliar compositions containing humic or lignohumic components, potassium dihydrogen phosphate, a copper-ammonia complex, or potassium silicate concentrate. Their effects were assessed in a vegetation experiment with 58-day-old winter wheat plants of the Cubus variety. Foliar treatment with silicon-containing compositions at 0.006% improved several physiological and biometric indicators compared with the water-treated control. The above-ground mass of 100 plants increased from 10.64 g in the control to 12.15 g after treatment with the silica nanosol composition containing potassium dihydrogen phosphate. Treated plants also showed lower water loss from leaves during the first hours after excision, indicating improved water-holding capacity. Silicon-containing treatments increased the content of photosynthetic pigments, especially chlorophyll b and total carotenoids. The highest carotenoid values were recorded after treatment with compositions containing potassium dihydrogen phosphate or the copper-ammonia complex. These treatments also reduced malondialdehyde accumulation in leaves, suggesting lower lipid peroxidation. The findings indicate that selected silica nanosol-based foliar compositions may support leaf water status and oxidative balance in winter wheat under the tested moisture-deficit conditions.