The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), launched world’s first ‘nano urea liquid’ for farmers across the world on the occasion of IFFCO’s 50th annual general meeting. The nano urea liquid will be used as a source of nitrogen for plants in place of conventional urea. It will also prevent the imbalanced and excessive use of conventional urea. Excess urea leads to environmental pollution, harm to soil health, disease and infestation to plants, delayed maturity of the crop, production loss, etc.
- The efficacy trails for nano urea have been conducted by the Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR), in 20 of its research institutes, along with state agricultural universities on around 43 crops.
- At all India level, about 11,000 farmer field trials on 90 crops have been undertaken under the supervision of Krishi Vigyan Kendras.
Nano Urea
- Nano urea liquid has been developed indigenously at IFFCO’s Nano Biotechnology Research Centre (NBRC), situated in Kalol, Gujarat through a proprietary patented technology.
- It is considered more impactful than the conventional urea presently used by farmers because the nano urea contains nanoscale nitrogen particles, which have greater surface area. Nano urea also contains more nitrogen particles as compared to conventional urea. Average physical size of nano urea particles is in the range of 20–50 nm.
- Nano urea contains over 40,000 ppm of nitrogen in a 500 ml bottle, which is equal to the impact of nitrogen by a bag of conventional urea.
- Further, the uptake efficiency of nano urea is over 80 per cent as compared to normal urea (about 30 to 40 per cent).
According to Department of Biotechnology (DBT), Government of India, and Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) nano urea has been found to be safe for humans, animals, birds, rhizosphere organisms, and environment at the recommended levels of application.
Benefits
Some benefits of using nano urea are as follows:
- Nano urea minimises the use of conventional urea by over 50 per cent and enhances crop productivity.
Usually, the nitrogen content in a healthy plant is in the range of 1.5 to 4 per cent. IFFCO claims that foliar application of nano urea (liquid) at critical crop growth stages of a plant effectively fulfils its nitrogen requirement and leads to higher crop productivity and quality in comparison to conventional urea.
- It improves soil health, and nutritional quality of produce.
- It is more affordable than urea.
- As such, it could help minimise the input cost and increase farmers’ income.
- It could protect the crops from harmful effects such as lodging.
- It could help tackle problems such as global warming and favour the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
- Its packaging in the form of bottles would significantly reduce the cost and efforts required in logistics and warehousing.
Production, Sale, and Price
- IFFCO started the production of nano urea June 2021. Besides Kalol, nano urea liquid will also be produced at IFFCO’s Aonla and Phulpur Plants in Uttar Pradesh.
- Nano urea would be available to farmers via cooperative sales and various marketing channels apart from IFFCO’s e-commerce platform itself.
- A bottle of nano urea would cost around ₹ 240 which is 10 per cent cheaper than a bag of conventional urea.
India’s Dependency on Import of Conventional Urea
The production of urea, during 2019–20, was about 244.55 LMT (lakh metric tonnes) in India whereas the consumption volume was approximately 336 LMT. Consequently, India had to import about 91.99 LMT of conventional urea in order to meet the supply gap.
About IFFCO
The Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) is a multi-state cooperative society, involved in the manufacturing and marketing of fertilisers. IFFCO was founded in 1967 with initially 57 member-cooperatives. It is headquartered in New Delhi, India. IFFCO has around 19 per cent market share in urea and 29 per cent market share in complex fertilisers (P2O5). India’s largest fertiliser producer, IFFCO was ranked 66th on the Fortune India 500 list, with a net worth of US$ 2.3 billion as on March 2018.
Currently, it consists of about 35,000 member-cooperatives reaching over 50 million farmers in India.
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