Innovative agriculture: bicontinuous structures as delivery systems for fertilizers and pesticides

Fertilizer and pesticide management has become essential over the past few years. The role of fertilizers in increasing crop yields, together with the protection against pests provided by pesticides, is of utmost importance to support the population growth and the increasing pest demand [1]. Moreover, the abuse of these substances has caused significant damages to underground waters and water body, such as eutrophication [2,3]. In this work, bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gels (bijels) are used as controlled release systems and co-release systems for an effective use of both fertilizers (urea) and pesticides (atrazine). The main advantages of these systems reside in the easy production process, as the components are simply mixed at room temperature without surfactant molecules. The bijel system was obtained confining hydroxyapatite powdered NPs into a polymeric organic matrix of polycaprolactone that can be loaded simultaneously with fertilizers and pesticides. Initially, the bijel systems have been completely characterized, and their abilities of releasing the loaded molecules have been tested both in water and solid media. As expected, the release was much quicker in water (urea for 3 days, atrazine for 5 days) and slower when moving to solid media. In celite urea was released for more than a week and atrazine for more than 15 days, while in soil both urea and atrazine were for more than 20 days. Also plants treated with bijels showed promising results: for shoots 15 cm vs. 12 cm of the control group and for roots 3.5 cm vs. 1.5 cm of the control group [4].

References:

[1] M. Tudi et al., Int J Environ Res Public Health, 2021.

[2] R. Magaletti et al., ACS Agric. Sci. Techno, 2023.

[3] A. Zanino et al., Eur. Polym. J., 2024.

[4] F. Pizzetti et al., J. Ind. Eng. Chem., 2025.