Nano Urea

What is urea?

Urea is a chemical nitrogen fertiliser, white in colour, which artificially provides nitrogen, a major nutrient required by plants.

What is nano urea?

Nano urea is a patented and indigenously made liquid that contains nanoparticles of urea, the most crucial chemical fertiliser for farmers in India. It is essentially urea in the form of a nanoparticle.
- IFFCO’s Nano Urea contains nitrogen, an element critical for plant development, in the form of granules that are a hundred thousand times finer than a sheet of paper. At this ‘nano’ scale, which is about a billionth of a metre, materials behave differently than in the visible realm.
The process uses “organic polymers” that keeps the ‘nano’ particles of nitrogen stable and in a form that can be sprayed onto plants.
Liquid nano urea is sprayed directly on the leaves and gets absorbed by the plant. Fertilisers in nano form provide a targeted supply of nutrients to crops, as they are absorbed by the stomata(pores found on the epidermis of leaves).

Why in News:

Nano Urea’, a fertilizer patented and sold by the Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO), has been approved by the government for commercial use because of its potential to substantially reduce the import bill.

The need

While conventional urea has an efficiency of about 25 per cent, the efficiency of liquid nano urea can be as high as 85-90 percent.
Conventional urea fails to have the desired impact on crops as it is often applied incorrectly, and the nitrogen in it is vaporised or lost as gas. A lot of nitrogen is also washed away during irrigation.
Urea also forms 82 per cent of the total nitrogenous fertilisers consumed in India, with an annual consumption of 33.6 million tonnes in 2019-20.
A single half-litre bottle of the liquid nano urea can compensate for a 45kg sack of urea that farmers traditionally rely on, it is claimed.
Liquid nano urea has a shelf life of a year, and farmers need not be worried about “caking” when it comes in contact with moisture.
Apart from reducing the country’s subsidy bill, it is aimed at reducing the unbalanced and indiscriminate use of conventional urea.
According to IFFCO, the new nano urea liquid will increase the production of crops with improved nutritional quality.
Cheaper than conventional urea, the new product is also expected to reduce the environmental pollution caused by the granular form, by reducing its excessive application that exacerbates soil, water and air pollution with climate change problems.

The aim

By 2025, India’s domestic urea production as well as that of nano-urea would together mean India would be “self sufficient,” in the manufacture of urea -the most important fertiliser for India’s farmers– and would no longer require the 90 lakh tons that it imported every year and would save the country close to ₹40,000 crore.

How urea is used

Plants need nitrogen to make protein and they source almost all of it from soil bacteria which live in a plant’s roots and have the ability to break down atmospheric nitrogen, or that from chemicals such as urea, into a form usable by plants.
The standard practice when sowing crops such as wheat, rice, mustard is to use at least two 45-kg sacks of urea, an inorganic compound and the crops’ main source of nitrogen. The first is applied during the early sowing or transplantation stage of the crop. The second stage application is done when the plant has sprouted a canopy of leaves, and is approaching the reproductive phase of plant growth.

What is Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited?

Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited, also known as IFFCO, is a multi-state cooperative society. IFFCO is wholly owned by Cooperative Societies of India. The society is engaged in the business of manufacturing and marketing of fertilizers.
It is today the biggest co-op in the world by turnover on GDP per capita (as per World Cooperative Monitor 2021).

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