Glyphosate Separating and Sensing for Precision Agriculture and Environmental Protection in the Era of Smart Materials

The present articlecritically and comprehensively reviews themost recent reports on smart sensors for determining glyphosate (GLP),an active agent of GLP-based herbicides (GBHs) traditionally usedin agriculture over the past decades. Commercialized in 1974, GBHshave now reached 350 million hectares of crops in over 140 countrieswith an annual turnover of 11 billion USD worldwide. However, rollingexploitation of GLP and GBHs in the last decades has led to environmentalpollution, animal intoxication, bacterial resistance, and sustainedoccupational exposure of the herbicide of farm and companies'workers. Intoxication with these herbicides dysregulates the microbiome-gut-brainaxis, cholinergic neurotransmission, and endocrine system, causingparalytic ileus, hyperkalemia, oliguria, pulmonary edema, and cardiogenicshock. Precision agriculture, i.e., an (information technology)-enhancedapproach to crop management, including a site-specific determinationof agrochemicals, derives from the benefits of smart materials (SMs),data science, and nanosensors. Those typically feature fluorescentmolecularly imprinted polymers or immunochemical aptamer artificialreceptors integrated with electrochemical transducers. Fabricatedas portable or wearable lab-on-chips, smartphones, and soft roboticsand connected with SM-based devices that provide machine learningalgorithms and online databases, they integrate, process, analyze,and interpret massive amounts of spatiotemporal data in a user-friendlyand decision-making manner. Exploited for the ultrasensitive determinationof toxins, including GLP, they will become practical tools in farmlandsand point-of-care testing. Expectedly, smart sensors can be used forpersonalized diagnostics, real-time water, food, soil, and air qualitymonitoring, site-specific herbicide management, and crop control.