Crop pests, such as plant pathogenic bacteria, fungi, virus and insects, represent some of the most threatening production loss’ causes in agroecosystems. Control and prevention strategies in plant protection sector are largely entrusted to the use of agrochemicals, such as copper and synthetic fungicides, but now a paradigm shift is strongly requested in order to achieve a higher sustainability of the agrofood supply chain.

The application of nanotechnology in plant protection could play an import role in reaching goals like minimizing the amount of usable agrochemicals and developing new antimicrobial compounds.

Nanotechnology-based agrochemicals are studied due to the unique and advantageous features that nano-sized materials get, including smart delivery, increased surface-volume ratio, better interaction with plant tissues and natural environment, controlled release and a role as carriers for active molecules.

The aim of this session is to give an overview of the most innovative and promising international research lines in crop protection-related nanotechnology, highlighting not only obtained results but also potential industrial scale up, economic and environmental sustainability of topics like new nanocompounds formulation, nanomaterial-plant-pest molecular and physiological interaction.