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Nitrogen, which is a key nutrient source for food, biomass, and fibre production in agriculture, is by far the most important element in fertilizers when judged in terms of the energy required for its synthesis, tonnage used and monetary value. However, compared with amounts of nitrogen applied to soil, the nitrogen use efficiency (NUE) by crops is very low. Between 50 and 70% of the nitrogen applied using conventional fertilizers—plant nutrient formulations with dimensions greater than 100 nm—is lost owing to leaching in the form of water soluble nitrates, emission of gaseous ammonia and nitrogen oxides, and long-term incorporation of mineral nitrogen into soil organic matter by soil microorganisms 1. Numerous attempts to increase the NUE have so far met with little success, and the time may have come to apply nanotechnology to solve some of these problems.

Carbon nanotubes were recently shown to penetrate …