Sustainable Food Security Through Nanotechnology-Based Seed Priming in Rice and Wheat

Nano-priming has emerged as a novel technology for improving seed germination, vigour, and stress tolerance, and enhancing nutrient uptake in cereal grains, especially rice and wheat. This study presents a bibliometric analysis of 6302 publications obtained by a Boolean search query from the Scopus database, executed in November 2025. The dataset was further refined by using strict inclusion–exclusion criteria and mapped for the intellectual, geographic, and collaborative structure of the research on the topic under study at the global level. Country-level research productivity, subject-area distribution, annual publication trajectories, source-level publication patterns, and co-authorship networks are part of this study. The analysis revealed a highly skewed global publication distribution dominated by China, India, and Pakistan, which are major global hubs for nanotechnology-assisted seed treatment research, on the nano-priming of seeds. Agricultural sciences, environmental sciences, materials science, and nanotechnology emerged as dominant interdisciplinary contributors to nano-priming research. Annual publication trends continue to show an exponential rise since 2013, driven by growing interests in nanotechnology-enabled crop improvement. Co-authorship analysis revealed dense collaborative clusters centred in South and East Asia, interconnected through key bridging authors. The bibliometric evaluation, together with evidence-based synthesis of experimental studies, highlighted zinc oxide, titanium dioxide, silver, iron oxide, chitosan, and carbon-based nanomaterials as the main hotspots driving physiological enhancement in rice and wheat through enzymatic activation, nutrient uptake, and stress-resilience pathways. Nanotechnology-based seed treatments in rice and wheat offer a promising and sustainable approach to enhance crop productivity, stress tolerance, nutrient-use efficiency, and global food security under changing environmental conditions.