Nanotechnology is a promising field of interdisciplinary research. It opens up a wide array of opportunities in various fields like medicine, pharmaceuticals, electronics and agriculture. The potential uses and benefits of nanotechnology are enormous. The current global population is nearly 7 */billion with 50% living in Asia. A large proportion of those living in developing countries face daily food shortages as a result of environmental impacts or political instability, while in the developed world there is surplus of food. For developing countries, the drive is to develop drought and pest resistant crops, which also maximize yield. The potential of nanotechnology to revolutionise the health care, textile, materials, information and communication technology, and energy sectors has been well publicized. The application of nanotechnology to agriculture and food industries is also getting attention nowadays. Investments in agriculture and food nanotechnologies carry increasing weight because their potential benefits range from improved food quality and safety to reduced agricultural inputs and improved processing and nutrition. While most investment is made primarily in developed countries, research advancements provide glimpses of potential applications in agricultural, food, and water safety that could have significant impacts on rural populations in developing countries. This review is concentrated on modern strategies used for the management of water, pesticides, limitations in the use of chemical pesticides and potential of nano-materials in sustainable agriculture management as modern approaches of nanotechnology. 
 
   
 
 Key words: Agriculture, nanotechnology, nanofertilizer, nanoencapsulation, nanoherbicides.

Nanotechnology in sustainable agriculture: Present concerns and future aspects

Edible films and coatings: a review.

Bioactive compounds of beetroot and utilization in food processing industry: A critical review.

Bioactive compounds, e.g., protein, polyunsaturated fatty acids, carotenoids, vitamins and minerals, found in commercial form of microalgal biomass (e.g., powder, flour, liquid, oil, tablet, or capsule forms) may play important roles in functional food (e.g., dairy products, desserts, pastas, oil-derivatives, or supplements) or feed (for cattle, poultry, shellfish, and fish) with favorable outcomes upon human health, including antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, antimicrobial, and antiviral effects, as well as prevention of gastric ulcers, constipation, anemia, diabetes, and hypertension. However, scale up remains a major challenge before commercial competitiveness is attained. Notwithstanding the odds, a few companies have already overcome market constraints, and are successfully selling extracts of microalgae as colorant, or supplement for food and feed industries. Strong scientific evidence of probiotic roles of microalgae in humans is still lacking, while scarce studies have concluded on probiotic activity in marine animals upon ingestion. Limitations in culture harvesting and shelf life extension have indeed constrained commercial viability. There are, however, scattered pieces of evidence that microalgae play prebiotic roles, owing to their richness in oligosaccharides—hardly fermented by other members of the intestinal microbiota, or digested throughout the gastrointestinal tract of humans/animals for that matter. However, consistent applications exist only in the dairy industry and aquaculture. Despite the underlying potential in formulation of functional food/feed, extensive research and development efforts are still required before microalgae at large become a commercial reality in food and feed formulation.

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Potential Industrial Applications and Commercialization of Microalgae in the Functional Food and Feed Industries: A Short Review.

Exopolysaccharides from probiotic bacteria and their health potential.

Effects of processing parameters such as creaming time, dough mixing time, cookie thickness, baking temperature, time and principal ingredients viz. sugar, fat and water on quality of sugar snap cookies were investigated using the Response Surface Methodology. Shorter mixing time (100 s) along with higher creaming time (400 s) was desirable for producing softer cookies with tender bite and higher spread factor. Cookie baked at 190 °C had superior quality in terms of hardness and spread factor as compared with those baked either at lower or at higher temperature. At lower baking temperature, hardness of cookie increased as the baking time was decreased below 14 min. Hardness also increased significantly with increase in water content at all levels of sugar concentration in the formula. Optimum cookie quality was obtained with creaming time of 400 s and mixing time 100 s to make cookie dough containing 59.65% sugar, 46.68% fat and 14% water. Cookie thickness 11 mm, baking temperature 190 °C and baking time of 16 min 30 s resulted in best cookies.

Effect of processing parameters and principal ingredients on quality of sugar snap cookies: a response surface approach

Effect of finger millet on nutritional, rheological, and pasting profile of whole wheat flat bread (chapatti)

Aegle marmelos L. (bael) is a fruit tree of Rutaceae family, widely grown all over the world. This plant is gaining popularity because of its nutrient-rich fruits and immense traditional medicinal usage and pharmacological properties. The health promotive and protective effect of bael fruit is accounted by fibers, carotenoids, phenolics, terpenoids, coumarins, flavonoids, and alkaloids. The curative relevance of these compounds has been assessed by various in vivo and in vitro studies. Fruit shows numerous possible health benefits, namely, radio-protective effects, peroxidation, antibacterial, inhibition of lipid, antidiarrheal, gastroprotective, antiviral, antidiabetic, anti-ulcerative colitis, cardioprotective, free-radical scavenging (antioxidant) and hepatoprotective effects. The health benefits of bael are not only limited to edible portion (fruit), but it also extends to nonedible portion (root, trunk, bark, leaf, flower and seed) having comparable biologically active compounds. Increasing awareness about the role of diet among health-conscious consumers for human well-being has increased the interest in functional foods thereby exploration of the functional attributes of various underutilized plants is being reaffirmed and various sources are emerged out as suitable food material for processing industry. The various scientific reports collected from different bibliometric sources suggested that A. marmelos and its bioactive constituents could play a vital role in the prevention of several chronic and degenerative diseases associated with oxidation stress. This review emphasis on recent scientific evidences on nutrition and bioactive profile of A. marmelos, health benefits along with clinical and nonclinical trials of various phytoconstituents and A. marmelos potential in food processing industry for various food products. Our study suggests that this plant does indeed have pharmacological properties of interest, however, further extensive research is needed to establish a potential strategy that can balance the pharmacological and toxic effects of bael.

Bioactive compounds of Aegle marmelos L., medicinal values and its food applications: A critical review.

Characterisation of Indian wheat varieties for chapatti (flat bread) quality

Sorghum is quite comparable to wheat, rich source of nutrients with various health benefits, and therefore considered as a grain of future. The purpose of this paper is to review the bioactive active compounds, health benefits and processing of the sorghum. Sorghum is utilized for animal feeding rather than the human food usage. Therefore, this paper focuses on the emerging new health foods with benefits of the sorghum.,Major well-known bibliometric information sources searched were the Web of Science, Google Scholar, Scopus and PubMed. Several keywords like nutritional value of sorghum, bioactive compounds present in sorghum, health benefits of sorghum and processing of sorghum were chosen to obtain a large range of papers to be analyzed. A final inventory of 91 scientific sources was made after sorting and classifying them according to different criteria based on topic, academic field country of origin and year of publication.,From the literature reviewed, sorghum processing through various methods, including milling, malting, fermentation and blanching, bioactive compounds, as well as health benefits of sorghum were found and discussed.,Through this paper, possible processing methods and health benefits of sorghum are discussed after detailed studies of literature from journal articles.

Navnidhi Chhikara

Papers

Effect of processing parameters and principal ingredients on quality of sugar snap cookies: a response surface approach

Effect of finger millet on nutritional, rheological, and pasting profile of whole wheat flat bread (chapatti)

Bioactive compounds of Aegle marmelos L., medicinal values and its food applications: A critical review.

Characterisation of Indian wheat varieties for chapatti (flat bread) quality

Exploring the nutritional and phytochemical potential of sorghum in food processing for food security