Functional spray adjuvants play an increasingly important role in stabilizing and enhancing pesticide performance under changing agricultural conditions, including climate change, labor shortages, and the expansion of smart agriculture. This review describes the development and performance of two types of functional adjuvants: high-wetting adjuvants and drone-spraying adjuvants.

High-wetting adjuvants were designed based on a comprehensive control of both liquid surface tension and solid–liquid interfacial tension, using plant-derived polyoxyethylene fatty acid esters as active ingredients. These adjuvants exhibited superior wetting and spreading on hydrophobic crop surfaces and enhanced penetration into fungal and insect bodies, leading to stabilized and improved efficacy of fungicides and insecticides. Drone-spraying adjuvants were developed to address specific challenges of aerial application, such as droplet evaporation, drift, and reduced surface coverage. By suppressing droplet evaporation through interfacial film formation, these adjuvants effectively reduced drift and significantly improved crop coverage and pest control efficacy under low-volume, high-concentration, and high-altitude spraying conditions.

These findings demonstrate that precise interfacial control using functional adjuvants can contribute to reduced pesticide use, improved application efficiency, and sustainable crop protection in next-generation agriculture.

Rice production in Japan faces multiple challenges, including an aging and declining farming population and increasing impacts of climate change. In particular, frequent high temperatures during the grain-filling period causes deterioration in grain appearance quality, while stronger demands emerge for labor-saving practices, cost reduction, and environmental sustainability. These challenges highlight the need to move beyond experience-based cultivation toward integrated, data-driven production systems. This review summarizes recent advances in next-generation rice production technologies from three perspectives: climate change–adaptive breeding, smart and labor-saving production technologies, and environmentally harmonized cultivation practices, with a focus on research outcomes from the Central Region Agricultural Research Center, NARO. The characteristics and quality stability mechanisms of the rice cultivar ‘Niji-no-kirameki’, which combines high-temperature tolerance with high yield and stable grain quality, are first introduced. Next, advancements in phenological development prediction models for dry direct-seeded rice and sensing-based diagnosis for nitrogen topdressing using UAVs and portable spectrometers are described, demonstrating the benefits of integrating growth-stage prediction with quantitative crop assessment. In addition, the use of high-yielding cultivars under reduced fertilization and cultivation practices that mitigate methane emissions from paddy fields are reviewed as key components of sustainable rice production.

Together, these studies underscore the importance of integrating breeding, smart production, and environmental considerations to support adaptive and sustainable rice production systems under future climate variability.