Plant growth promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR) shows an important role in the sustainable agriculture industry. The increasing demand for crop production with a significant reduction of synthetic chemical fertilizers and pesticides use is a big challenge nowadays. The use of PGPR has been proven to be an environmentally sound way of increasing crop yields by facilitating plant growth through either a direct or indirect mechanism. The mechanisms of PGPR include regulating hormonal and nutritional balance, inducing resistance against plant pathogens, and solubilizing nutrients for easy uptake by plants. In addition, PGPR show synergistic and antagonistic interactions with microorganisms within the rhizosphere and beyond in bulk soil, which indirectly boosts plant growth rate. There are many bacteria species that act as PGPR, described in the literature as successful for improving plant growth. However, there is a gap between the mode of action (mechanism) of the PGPR for plant growth and the role of the PGPR as biofertilizer—thus the importance of nano-encapsulation technology in improving the efficacy of PGPR. Hence, this review bridges the gap mentioned and summarizes the mechanism of PGPR as a biofertilizer for agricultural sustainability.

Wood-based industry is one of the main drivers of economic growth in Malaysia. Forest being the source of various lignocellulosic materials has many untapped potentials that could be exploited to produce sustainable and biodegradable nanosized material that possesses very interesting features for use in wood-based industry itself or across many different application fields. Wood-based products sector could also utilise various readily available nanomaterials to enhance the performance of existing products or to create new value added products from the forest. This review highlights recent developments in nanotechnology application in the wood-based products industry.

Bamboo waste (BW) was activated with a K₂CO₃ precursor in a microwave process for the adsorption of MB dye from an aqueous solution. The prepared bamboo-waste-activated carbon (BWAC) was analyzed by instrumental techniques such as FTIR, SEM, and BET analysis. The surface of the BWAC was mesoporous with a surface area of 107.148 m²/g. The MB dye removal was optimized with the three variables of adsorbent dose, pH, and contact time using the Box–Behnken design (BBD) model. Up to 87% of MB was removed in the optimized conditions of adsorbent dose of 0.08 g/100 mL, pH of 7.62, time of 8 min, and concentration of 50 mg/L. Here, the most effective parameter for MB removal was found to be adsorbent dose with an F-value of 121.70, while time and pH showed a smaller effect. The maximum adsorption capacity of BWAC in the optimized conditions was found to be 85.6 mg/g. The adsorption of MB on BWAC’s surface was through chemisorption and a spontaneous process. The adsorption mechanism study showed that three types of interactions are responsible for the removal of MB dye from aqueous solutions by BWAC, i.e., electrostatic interactions, H-bonding, and pi–pi interactions. Hence, BWAC can be considered a highly efficient adsorbent for MB removal from wastewater.

An experimental study is presented examining the preparation and characterization of a smart gypsum composite board for thermal comfort building application. Composite boards were prepared by mixing 1–30% by weight nano-encapsulated n-octadecane phase change material (PCM) with gypsum to develop gypsum-based building materials with thermal energy storage (TES) capability. The nanocapsules were prepared by encapsulating n-octadecane in nano-sized styrene-methyl–methacrylate copolymer shells using one-step mini-emulsion in situ polymerization. A thermal performance testing device was designed to evaluate the heat storage effect of the resulting gypsum composite. The results indicated that composite boards containing n-octadecane nanocapsules effectively decreased the temperature peak of the experimental test room compared with gypsum board without n-octadecane nanocapsules. This suggested that the composite boards had good thermal energy storage properties. It was also demonstrated that the composit...