Urea as a fertilizer

Abstract

The results of the grassland experiments show that as a straight nitrogen fertilizer urea was, on average, slightly less effective than the conventional materials. In the majority of individual experiments there was no significant difference between the yields from urea and those from ‘Nitro-Chalk’; on the other hand, in a very few experiments the urea yields were much lower. The arithmetic means of the averages in each series of grassland experiments indicate that urea gave total yields about 93% of those from ‘Nitro-Chalk’ and the average response (i.e. difference from control) from urea was about 85% of that from ‘Nitro-Chalk’.The available data for cereals are considerably less than for grassland but here again there is an indication of the infrequent slightly lower efficiency of urea.On kale the results are confusing. At times urea was safe but in one experiment heavy dressings incorporated in the seed-bed caused serious damage.