Microneedle technology as a new standpoint in agriculture: treatment and sensing

Abstract

Preventing plant loss and improving their health status are essential for agricultural industry. Correspondingly, the deprivation of plants severely impacts our ecological system. As such, global efforts have been intensely made to promote the development of advanced sensing and treatment platforms to forestall plant loss. Existing technologies mainly encounter a number of challenges in providing results in a non-invasive, rapid turnaround, and affordable fashions. Accordingly, notable progressions in innovative approaches—particularly biosensing and delivery platforms, are vastly required for agriculture realm. In this regard, microneedles have emerged as a pivotal technological tool that plays multifaceted roles in biosensing and delivery systems, with attention of growing towards agriculture. Simply put, microneedles offer several advantages over conventional methods for being less invasive, rapid, and highly precise. In this review, recent advancements in microneedle technologies including their implementations in agriculture are highlighted coherently. In particular, extracting DNA from plant leaves and expressing transient genes using microneedles are elaborated in details. Microneedle-based sensing platforms for detecting essential compounds and secondary metabolites are discussed as well. Recent advances focusing the delivery of agrochemicals and nanotherapeutics via microneedles are elaborated. By this means, this review aims to bridge the existing gaps between microneedles and agriculture precisely.