Abstract: Fertilizers are pivotal to increasing agricultural production and farmers’ income, playing a significant role in ensuring food security. However, chemical fertilizer application face challenges such as low nutrient utilization rate and unreasonable application practices, leading to the wasting of resources, soil quality degradation, and agricultural non-point source pollution. To address these issues, green intelligent fertilizer (GIF) has emerged as a promising solution. GIF are designed to respond to rhizosphere environmental changes and release nutrients in a manner that synchronizes with crop requirements. Among various components of DIFs, environmentally responsive materials (ERMs) have garnered considerable attention as a research hotspot due to their ability to intelligently adapt to environmental factors and precisely regulate nutrient release. This study offered a comprehensive review on the research progress on ERMs, with a particular focus on their types, synthesis and control mechanisms, stimulus-response behavior, nutrient coupling strategies, and their performance in GIF application. The primary methods for synthesizing ERMs include free radical polymerization and chemical grafting, with monomer selection and functional group grafting serve as common strategies. Intramolecular hydrogen bonding and electrostatic effects dominant the stimulus-response mechanisms, while electrostatic adsorption and physical encapsulation are widely used for nutrient coupling. Future research should prioritize the establishment of a theoretical framework for ERM synthesis and regulation, the development of ERMs that response to multiple environmental factors, and the renovation of novel technologies and processes for nutrient coupling.