A review on application of controlled released fertilizers influencing the sustainable agricultural production: A cleaner production process

The extreme use of commercial fertilizers (CF) for maximum agricultural crop production leads to severe environmental pollution, reduces land fertility as well as directly or indirectly affects human health. Besides, it lowers down the nutrient use efficiency (NUE) by decreasing the rate of crop production with the increased rate of fertilization which expedites the cost of production. In this review, we have explored the recent advancements of slow and/or controlled released fertilizers and their impacts on crop production in terms of the growth, development, and yield of agricultural crop plants. However, we have found that slow-release fertilizers (SRFs) cost much because their pattern of nutrients release is not in a controlled manner that leads to nutrient loss into the ecosystems. Contrarily, the controlled released fertilizers (CRFs) releases their nutrients with a controlled pattern, however, the size of both SRFs and CRFs are not always specific for the particular crop plants, therefore, there would have a great chance to be aggregated of SFs and/or CRFs into the plant rhizosphere due to lower uptake by the plants causing the plant toxicity and polluting the groundwater and environments. Thus, from this review, an innovative nano-fertilizers that could be named as controlled released nano-fertilizers (CRNFs) has been proposed to be developed that will regulate the nutrient release with the plant’s demand with time, increase the NUE and reduce the environmental pollution suggesting the sustainable crop production. Moreover, we believe that the industrialization of CRNFs could replace CF which will greatly contribute to the cleaner agricultural production process.