The global food industry is facing growing pressure to enhance food safety, extend shelf life, minimize waste, and adopt environmentally sustainable packaging solution. Nanotechnology offers innovative ways to meet these demands by enabling the creation of smart and sustainable food packaging systems. Due to their unique properties, nanomaterials can significantly enhance the functional performance of packaging by boosting mechanical strength, barrier efficiency, antimicrobial activity, and responsiveness to environmental stimuli. This review provides a comprehensive overview of nanomaterials used as smart and sustainable food packaging, focusing on their role in active and intelligent packaging systems. By integrating nanomaterials like metal and metal oxide nanoparticles, carbon-based nanostructures, and nano-biopolymers, packaging can now perform real-time sensing, spoilage detection, and traceability. These systems improve food quality management and supply chain transparency while supporting global sustainability goals. The review also discusses potential risks related to nanomaterials’ migration, environmental impact, and consumer safety, as well as the current regulatory landscape and limitations in industrial scalability. Emphasis is placed on the importance of standardized safety assessments and eco-friendly design to support responsible innovation. Overall, nano-enabled smart packaging represents a promising strategy for advancing food safety and sustainability. Future developments will require collaboration across disciplines and robust regulatory frameworks to ensure the safe and practical application of nanotechnology in food systems.

The agricultural sector is a vital source of human well-being that provides the necessities of daily life. A variety of farming systems are utilized in agriculture, such as a wide range of tillage options, no-till, agroforestry, precision farming, organic farming, cover cropping, crop rotations, etc. Each of these farming systems has unique challenges, and nanotechnology has successfully improved on many of them. Agricultural applications of nanotechnology include nanofertilizers, nanopesticides, nanosensors, nanobiotechnology, and nanoremediation. This study focuses on the application of nano-farming technologies to different farming systems. Suggested practices include nano improvement of soil quality, crop nano-protection under biotic stress, nanoremediation of polluted soil and water environments, nanomanagement of agro-wastes, nano-agrochemicals, nano-precision farming, and nanobiotechnology for modern farming. This review also addresses expected problems that may occur due to over application of nanomaterials to farming systems, such as nanopollution and nanotoxicity of agroecosystem compartments. Several dimensions are emphasized in this study, such as green energy, sustainable development, the circular bioeconomy, land biodegradation, pollution, and the one health approach, as essential for the global goals of sustainable development. Nanofarming presents both benefits and obstacles to human life. The exact balance between these benefits and challenges needs more study.

The increasing prevalence of toxic compounds in food, agriculture, and the environment presents a critical challenge to public health and ecological sustainability. Carbon nanodots (CNDs), with their excellent photoluminescence, biocompatibility, and ease of functionalization, have emerged as highly promising materials for developing advanced sensors that target hazardous substances. This review provides a comprehensive overview of the synthesis, functionalization, and sensing mechanisms of CND-based sensors, highlighting their versatile application in detecting toxic compounds such as heavy metals, pesticides, mycotoxins, and emerging contaminants. The article outlines recent advancements in fluorescence, electrochemical, and colorimetric detection strategies and presents key case studies that illustrate the successful application of CNDs in real-world monitoring scenarios. Furthermore, it addresses the challenges associated with reproducibility, scalability, selectivity, and sensor stability and explores future directions for integrating CNDs with smart and sustainable technologies. This review emphasizes the transformative potential of CNDs in achieving rapid, cost-effective, and environmentally friendly toxin detection solutions across multiple domains.

The intensive applications of nanomaterials in the agroecosystem led to the creation of several environmental problems. More efforts are needed to discover new insights in the nanomaterial–microbe–plant nexus. This relationship has several dimensions, which may include the transport of nanomaterials to different plant organs, the nanotoxicity to soil microbes and plants, and different possible regulations. This review focuses on the challenges and prospects of the nanomaterial–microbe–plant nexus under agroecosystem conditions. The previous nano-forms were selected in this study because of the rare, published articles on such nanomaterials. Under the study’s nexus, more insights on the carbon nanodot–microbe–plant nexus were discussed along with the role of the new frontier in nano-tellurium–microbe nexus. Transport of nanomaterials to different plant organs under possible applications, and translocation of these nanoparticles besides their expected nanotoxicity to soil microbes will be also reported in the current study. Nanotoxicity to soil microbes and plants was investigated by taking account of morpho-physiological, molecular, and biochemical concerns. This study highlights the regulations of nanotoxicity with a focus on risk and challenges at the ecological level and their risks to human health, along with the scientific and organizational levels. This study opens many windows in such studies nexus which are needed in the near future.

Developed method to optimize green CNDs synthesis & measure concentration in baked goods. Extracted CNDs characterized using TEM, Raman, UV-Vis & fluorescence.