Biologically synthesised urea-based nanomaterial shows enhanced agronomic benefits in maize and rice crops during Kharif season

Abstract

The use of nanoparticles as plant nutrient supplementing source serves as an advanced and sustainable solution to significantly reduce the standard application dosages of conventional fertilisers while simultaneously enhancing the crop health and yield. This would lead to the overall minimization of carbon footprint generated from agriculture. Adequate supply of macronutrients like nitrogen is a key determinant for the crop productivity. Urea is the most favoured conventional nitrogen fertilizer used by farmers across the globe, however, it has low nutrient use efficiency, and more than half of the applied volume gets dissipated in the various environmental pockets. Urea nanoparticles (TNU) developed by using a precise bio-fermentation method has been evaluated in this study as a Nitrogen supplement to urea when the recommended dosage of urea is reduced by 25 and 50%. The prominent maize-rice cropping system during Kharif season of agriculture in India was investigated. Ten treatments having various combinations of conventional and nano nitrogen sources were laid out under the randomised complete block design (RCBD) in the fields of Punjab Agriculture University, India. In various treatments, TNU was applied through foliar applications and seed dressing. From the results, it was observed that the fertilising treatment having the combination of 75% dose of the conventional fertiliser in addition with TNU applications as the supplementary nitrogen source, outperformed the other treatments in terms of growth, yield and cost to benefit parameters in case of both maize and rice crops. The outcomes of the study showed that the biologically developed urea nanoparticles can safely reduce a minimum of 25% of the recommended dose of the conventional urea fertilizer, which may be introduced as a more sustainable and economical agricultural practice.