Liquid Nano Urea

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 3

Recently Prime Minister of India officially inaugurated the country’s first liquid nano urea plant at Kalol, Gujarat

• This patented product is expected to not only substitute imported urea, but to also produce better results in farms.
• IFFCO commissioned the Kalol liquid nano urea plant, the country’s first, in August 2021.

Liquid Nano Urea

• It is essentially urea in the form of a nanoparticle.
• Urea is a chemical nitrogen fertiliser, white in colour, which artificially provides nitrogen, a major nutrient required by plants.
• The product has been developed by Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) Nano Biotechnology Research Centre (NBRC) at Kalol.
• While conventional urea has an efficiency of about 25 per cent, the efficiency of liquid nano urea can be as high as 85-90 per cent.
• 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.
• 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
• 2-4 ml of nano urea should be mixed a litre of water and sprayed on crop leaves at active growth stages
• Liquid nano urea contains 4 per cent total nitrogen (w/v) evenly dispersed in water. The size of a nano nitrogen particle varies from 20-50 nm.
• 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

Indigenous Liquid Nano Urea vs Imported Urea

• The liquid nano urea produced by IFFCO comes in a half-litre bottle priced at Rs 240, and carries no burden of subsidy currently.
• By contrast, a farmer pays around Rs 300 for a 50-kg bag of heavily subsidised urea.
• The government’s fertilizer subsidy payout this financial year will be Rs 2 lakh crore, up 25 per cent from the Rs 1.6 lakh crore it paid last year.

Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Limited

• It is one of India’s biggest cooperative societies which is wholly owned by Indian Cooperatives.
• Founded in 1967 with just 57 cooperatives, today it is an amalgamation of over 36,000 Indian Cooperatives with diversified business interests ranging from General Insurance to Rural Telecom apart from its core business of manufacturing and selling fertilisers.

Objective:

• To enable Indian farmers to prosper through timely supply of reliable, high quality agricultural inputs and services in an environmentally sustainable manner and to undertake other activities to improve their welfare.