In its 50th annual general body meeting, which took place offline and virtually in India, the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) set up World’s first Nano Urea liquid for farmers.
What is Nano Urea liquid?
It promotes a balanced plant nutrition approach by lowering the redundancy of Urea application in the soil and makes the crops stronger, secured and healthier from the lodging effect. It makes a considerable impact when it comes to climate change and global warming.
The over-limit of urea makes plants more vulnerable to disease and insect infestation, late crop growth, and loss of production. Productivity and efficacy trials discovered that a 500 ml bottle of the liquid comes in position instead of one bag of conventional urea. It is an expectation that it will replace 13.7 million tonnes of urea by 2023. The price of nano urea liquid stands at Rs 240 per bottle, which is 10 % less than the cost.
The field trials were held under the National Agriculture Research System (NARS) at 20 Indian Council of Agricultural Research (ICAR) research bodies, Krishi Vigyan Kendras (KVKs) and state agricultural universities. These took place on more than 11,000 farmer fields on over 94 crops across India.
Nano Biotechnology Research Centre (NBRC) in Gujarat’s Kalol sent the first of its kind product to Uttar Pradesh’s farmers in bulk. It constitutes 82 per cent of the nitrogenous fertilisers taken into consideration for use in India. In 2019-20, it had a yearly consumption of 33.6 million tonnes.
According to IFFCO Chairperson Dilip Shangani, “Nano Urea is a product of the 21st century, and it is the need of the hour to keep the environment, soil, air and water, safe for future generations while securing food for all.” The company said it would increase farmers’ income and lower the input costs such as warehousing and logistics. It is expensive and pocket-friendly too.
What is the need for Nano Urea?
Plants in farms undertake nearly 30-50 % of nitrogen from urea. At the same time, the remaining goes unproductive due to rapid chemical shifts because of leaching, which infect water bodies and soil, and volatilisation that leads to the release of emissions of nitrous oxide in the atmosphere, which causes air pollution and global warming besides low nutritional efficiency for the crop.
Conventional urea is effective for approximately 30-50 per cent in making nitrogen reach plants. In contrast, the effectiveness of the nano urea liquid is more than 80 per cent, which is vital to farmers.
The rise in efficiency is there because of nanotechnology, which forms the basis of new urea that permits structuring of ultra-small particles providing increased surface-mass ratios and assists in restricting the delivery of plant nutrients.
Moreover, the country’s largest fertiliser seller and the cooperative has mulled over a massive countrywide campaign exercise to showcase & train the farmers about its usage and process. It will be essentially available to farmers through its cooperative sales and marketing channel besides its sale on IFFCO’s e-commerce platform named iffcobazar.in
