🖊 Nitrogen fertilizers contain nitrogen necessary for the growth of crops.
🖊 Nitrogen is the main component of chlorophyll that maintains a balance in the process of photosynthesis.
🖊 Nitrogen is also a part of amino acids in plants and constitutes protein.
Phosphorus Fertilizer
🖊 The efficiency of fertilizer depends upon effective phosphorus content, methods of fertilizing, properties of soil and crop strains.
🖊 Phosphorus found in the protoplasm of the plant cell
🖊 Phosphorus play a important role in the cell growth and proliferation.
🖊 The phosphorus fertilizer is beneficial for the growth of roots of the plants.
Organic fertilizers can be obtained from the following products:
🖊 Livestock Manure Agricultural Waste Industrial Waste Municipal Sludge
🖊 Fertilizers improve the water holding capacity of the plants and increase root depth.
🖊 Fertilizers increase plants’ tolerance towards pests
Fertilizer Consumption in India
🖊 Govt introduced neem-coated urea to reduce illegal diversion of urea for non-agricultural uses. It also stepped up the promotion of organic and zero-budget farming.
🖊 The Centre pays subsidy on urea to fertiliser manufacturers on the basis of cost of production at each plant and the units are required to sell the fertiliser at the government-set Maximum Retail Price (MRP).
🖊 The MRPs of non-urea fertilisers are decontrolled or fixed by the companies. The Centre, however, pays a flat per-tonne subsidy on these nutrients to ensure they are priced at “reasonable levels”. Example are Di-Ammonium Phosphate (DAP), Muriate of Potash (MOP).
🖊 Non-Urea Fertilizer comes under Nutrient Based Subsidy Scheme.
Nutrient Based Subsidy
🖊 Started in April 2010 by the DoF.
🖊 Govt give fixed amount of subsidy decided on an annual basis, is provided on each grade of subsidized Phosphatic & Potassic (P&K) fertilizers depending on its nutrient content
🖊 Objective use of fertilizers, improving agricultural productivity, promoting the growth of the indigenous fertilizers industry.
New Urea Policy
The New Urea Policy-2015 (NUP-2015) has been notified by Department of Fertilizers on 25th May, 2015, which was initially made effective from 1st June, 2015 upto 31st March, 2019, with the objective of maximizing indigenous urea production, promoting energy efficiency in urea production and rationalizing subsidy burden on the government.
Neem Coating of Urea
🖊 Neem coated urea is created by utilising two best things available. First the urea created by technology from Air & Natural gas and second products from nature’s gift i.e. neem plant.
🖊 Neem has proven Nitrification inhibition properties and hence slows down the release of nitrogen from urea and makes available nitrogen over a longer period with minimum loss of nitrogen thereby increasing nitrogen use efficiency.
🖊 Neem coated urea is produced by uniformly coating neem oil on prilled urea during the manufacturing process.
🖊 An increase in yield of paddy, sugarcane, maize, soybean, Tur/Red Gram.
🖊 Due to slow release of Nitrogen, Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) of Neem Coated Urea increases resulting in reduced consumption of NCU as compared to normal urea.
