Agriculture has been using fertilizers since the start of farming to supplement important nutrients such as nitrogen, potassium and phosphorous already found naturally in the soil.
With the population of the world growing by the minute, farming will have to sustain this growth with an increase in agricultural yield by keeping soils healthy and nutrient-rich to cope with the demand. Fertilizers are on one of the main drivers that can help the farming industry manage this increase in demand for food.
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But fertilisers are expensive and can often impact food supply especially in developing countries. Fertilizers can also harm the environment of not used correctly.
Now researchers have found a simple way to make a benign, more efficient fertilizer that could contribute to increased food supply and lessen the impact on the environment.
Nitrogen is on one of the most important elements in nature required for agriculture and is one of the key nutrients for food, fibre and biomass production found in fertilizers.
Urea is a rich source of nutrients and is commonly used by farmers as a fertiliser. But Urea breaks down quickly in wet soils and forms ammonia. The ammonia gets washed away into the water ways causing eutrophication and resultant environmental hazards relating to excessive nutrients in the water. The ammonia ultimately forms nitrous oxide (N2O) – a potent greenhouse gas contributor, when the chemical processes of nitrification and denitrification are not completed.
The researchers developed a simple and scalable method for coating hydroxyapatite (HA) nanoparticles with urea molecules at a ratio of urea to hydroxyapatite of 6:1 by weight. HA is a mineral which is found in human and animal tissues and considered to be environmentally friendly. Urea-HA nanohybrids were synthesized using a one-step in situ approach. It was found that the HA nanoparticles and urea slowly released nitrogen, when dissolved in water through the process of hybridization – 12 times slower than urea by itself.
Field tests were conducted in Sri Lanka during September to December and showed that HA-urea nanohybrid lowered the need for fertilizer by one-half and resulted in a better crop yield at 50 percent, demonstrating that nanotechnology can be used to develop slow release fertilisers which can significantly reduce the amount of chemicals used in farming to produce a good yield.
Researchers found that a nanohybrid with a nitrogen weight of 40 percent provides the ideal platform for slow release and that with this study there is potential to contribute to a new “green revolution” which can maintain the world’s growing demand for food while improving the environmental impact of agriculture.
Source: ACS Nano
