Table 7.

Types and functionalities of nanomaterials

Category	Nanomaterial	Use of nanomaterial	Application in foods	References
Inorganic nanoparticles	Silver nanoparticles	Generally used as antimicrobial agents in food packaging and storage containers Recently used as a stabilizing agent in nanofillers	Effective food packaging solution preventing entry of pathogens Crop yield variations seen in chili, radish, lettuce	Li et al. (2020); Zorraquín-Peña et al. (2020); Seray et al. (2020)
	ZnO nanoparticles	Considered a biocompatible material Nanomaterial found positive in control of food borne pathogens	Increase in quality of cucumber by 36% Carotene, zinc and iron increase in cucumber observed	(Venkatasubbu et al. 2016; Seray et al. 2020)
	Se nanoparticles	Combination of Cu + Se nanoparticles increased the overall yield and chlorophyll content of tomato	Modification in the enzymatic activity of tomato plant Tomato yield increased by 21% with 10 mg/L Se nanoparticles	(Hernández-Hernández et al. 2019)
	TiO2 nanoparticles	Photo activities shown on food contact surfaces Dual usage found in cosmetic (in sunscreens)	Packaging film of TiO2 proved better for storage of green lettuce	(Weir et al. 2012; Peter et al. 2015; Yemmireddy and Hung 2015)
	SiO2 nanoparticles	Anti-caking agent in certain powdered foods Abiotic stress resistant in plants and crops	Reduced the development stages of grapes (dosage: 0.5 g/L)	Lim et al. (2015); Zahedi et al. (2020)
Organic nanoparticles	Lipid nanoparticles	Used as oral delivery systems in drugs and active ingredients	Nutraceutical and drug delivery systems	Severino et al. (2012); Ban et al. (2020); Paliwal et al. (2020)
	Protein nanoparticles	Great potential in catalysis, synthesis, bio imaging Found in foods in the form of casein	Bovine milk and other dairy foods	Samadarsi et al. (2020)
	Carbohydrate nanoparticles	They are digestible or indigestible polysaccharides like sodium, alginate, pectin and cellulose. Physicochemical stability and solubility over algal oil nanoparticles showing high efficiency of 98.57% in the system	Encapsulation of oil	Verma et al. (2020); Wang et al. (2020b)