Shortage of urea in southern States is expected to be handled in about 15 months from now as foundation for the South India’s first IFFCO nano urea (liquid) manufacturing will be laid at Naganayakanahalli near Devanahalli on Thursday.
The plant being set up by IFFCO on 12 acres of land in Hi-Tech Defence and Aerotech Park near Devanahalli will have the capacity to manufacture five crore bottles of nano urea which is equivalent of five crore bags of urea accounting for 22.5 lakh tonnes.
This is almost 50% demand of the southern States that consume nearly 50 lakh tonnes of urea annually, says C. Narayanaswamy, State marketing head of IFFCO. He says this would also reduce soil acidification due to indiscriminate use of conventional urea.
“Nano urea has just 4% nitrogen content as against 45% in conventional urea. The excess composition of nitrogen will not help plants as they would not be able to absorb entire nitrogen. In fact the excess nitrogen content affects other organisms present in the soil too,” he says.
Also, the studies on use of nano urea by IFFCO conducted on 72 crops through various agricultural research institutions involving 11,000 farmers had shown that the nano urea also contributes to increase in yield by about 8% per cent besides being environment-friendly compared with the conventional urea, notes Dr. Narayanaswamy.
As against the conventional urea which would cost ₹266 per bag, nano urea would be available at ₹240 per bottle, he notes.
The transport nano urea would be much cheaper and it would also help save foreign exchange as sizeable quantum of conventional urea is being imported now.
Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai will lay the foundation stone for this nano urea maufacturing unit that will come up at a cost of ₹550 crore.
