IFFCO introduces world's first 'Nano Urea' for farmers; fertiliser major sets price at Rs 240/bottle

New Delhi: Leading cooperative IFFCO on Monday introduced the world’s first ‘‘Nano Urea’’ for farmers across the world, and its production will commence from June. The indigenously developed ‘‘Nano Urea’’ is in liquid form and is priced at Rs 240 per 500 ml bottle, which is 10 percent cheaper than the cost of a bag of conventional urea, it said. Nano urea will be available to farmers through its cooperative sales and marketing channel apart from IFFCO’s e-commerce platform www.iffcobazar.in. The product was introduced at IFFCO’s 50th annual general meeting held in online-offline mode. “IFFCO Nano Urea Liquid is easy on the pocket of farmers and will be effective in increasing farmers’ income. A 500 ml bottle of Nano Urea will replace at least one bag of conventional urea. Hence, it will reduce the input cost to farmers,” Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd said in a statement. The production of Nano Urea will start from June and its commercial rollout will start soon thereafter, it said. Highlighting the benefits of the new product, IFFCO said it is a sustainable solution for plant nutrition that boosts balanced soil nutrition programme by reducing the excessive use of urea and making crops stronger, healthier and protecting them from lodging effect. Nano Urea is developed to replace conventional urea and it can curtail the requirement of the same by at least 50 percent. It contains 40,000 parts per million (ppm) of Nitrogen in a 500 ml bottle, which is equivalent to the impact of nitrogen nutrient provided by one bag of conventional urea, it said. Since it is in a bottle form will significantly bring down the logistics and warehousing cost. Further, the new product would help reduce soil, water and air pollution, besides addressing global warming, it added. According to IFFCO, Nano urea has been included in the government’s Fertiliser Control Order after the field trials were undertaken under National Agriculture Research System (NARS), 20 ICAR research institutes, State Agriculture Universities and Krishi Vighyana Kendras on 43 crops. To test its efficacy, around 11,000 farmer field trials were undertaken on more than 94 crops across India and results showed an average 8 percent increase in crop yields, it said. Nano Urea Liquid has been developed indigenously through proprietary technology at IFFCO’s Nano Biotechnology Research Centre (NBRC) in Kalol, Gujarat.