Tackling pesticide overusing through foliar deposition and retention: Frontiers and challenges

Pesticides are typically used excessively to ensure crop yields due to their low utilization extent, which can exert pressure on the environment and cause adverse effects on non-target species as well as pose a threat to human health. Hence, reducing the potential risks due to excessive pesticide use is an important goal of agriculture and environmental policies worldwide. The low pesticide utilization efficiency is attributed to poor droplet deposition on plant surfaces as well as weak interaction between pesticide and plant surfaces. In the past decades, considerable efforts have been put into solving these problems. However, a number of key challenges still remain to be addressed for the practical application. In this paper, we outline the development of a range of methods for improving the retention of pesticide on plant leaves. We also discuss and highlight several key issues that merit more attention in the future.