IFFCO, the cooperative fertiliser company, has reached out to farmers in Kuttanad – the rice bowl of Kerala – through a boat campaign to popularise its nano urea liquid.

Kuttanad is a region covering Alappuzha, Kottayam and Pathanamthitta districts. The Kuttanad Below Sea-level Farming System (KBSFS) is unique and it is the only system in India that practices rice cultivation at around 1.2-3 metre below sea level.

IFFCO’s awareness campaign in Kerala is part of the cooperatives’ plan to reach out to farmers across the country for the promotion of IFFCO Nano Urea – its revolutionary fertiliser product.

“IFFCO is serving the farmers across the country. The awareness campaign is to reach to farmers for IFFCO Nano Urea, water-soluble fertilisers and Sagarika by boat on the backwaters of Kayal regions of Kuttanad, Alappuzha”, US Awasthi, Managing Director, IFFCO said in his tweet.

“The company has also started a similar campaign among farmers in many villages in Palakkad by road to familiarise the product among paddy farmers where the Rabi season is on,” said A Manikandan, State Marketing Manager, IFFCO-Kerala.

Encouraging response

He said that the product was introduced in the State in September last year and there has been an encouraging response from the farming community as is evident from the sales of 60,000 bottles of fertiliser across the State.

“We are targeting a sale of 1.5 lakh bottles by March this year, a five per cent of the total urea requirement in the State at 1.5 lakh tonnes per year,” he told BusinessLine.

What is nano urea liquid?

Nano urea liquid is a source of nitrogen – a major essential nutrient required for the proper growth and development of a crop. It was developed for the first time in the world at IFFCO-Nano Biotechnology Research Centre, Kalol in Gujarat through indigenous proprietary patented technology.

The all India multi-location and multi-crop trials of nano urea have confirmed a reduction in the application of bulk nitrogenous fertilisers like urea by 50 per cent.

Nitrogen is an essential nutrient and key constituent of amino acids, enzymes, genetic material (DNA-RNA), photosynthetic pigments (chlorophyll) and energy transfer compounds (ATP-ADP) of a crop. 

A healthy crop should contain about 4 per cent nitrogen in foliage to maintain its physiological processes. Foliar application of nano urea at critical crop growth stages effectively fulfils its nitrogen requirement for higher crop productivity.

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