‘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, but several experts have questioned the science underlying its efficacy.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi, while inaugurating a Nano Urea production plant at Kalol, Gujarat on May 28, said, “…a small bottle (500 ml) of Nano Urea is equivalent to one 50 kg bag of granular urea currently used by farmers”.
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.
