Journal of Agronomy and Field Innovations

Background: Nitrogen (N) is the most critical nutrient for global maize production, but the conventional fertilizers used in maize cultivation have relatively low efficiency (about 30% to 50 %), leading to significant nitrogen loss, giving rise to economic and environmental harms due to ammonia volatilization, denitrification, and nitrate leaching. Nano-urea has provided a technology that may revolutionize precision nutrient management through its controlled nitrogen release, higher plant availability, and reduced fertilizer losses due to its unique properties.
Objective: The aim of the current study is to evaluate nano-urea and conventional nitrogen fertilizers in terms of maize plants’ growth, physiological parameters, nitrogen use efficiency, yield parameters, and sustainability with respect to the environment.
Methods: The field experiment was carried out using a randomized block design. The experiment involved the following six treatment options with respect to nitrogen application: control (0 nitrogen), 100% conventional fertilizer application, 75% conventional fertilizer + nano urea, nano urea alone, 50% conventional fertilizer + nano urea, and a combination of nano urea + conventional fertilizer application. These treatment options were repeated four times.
Result: The grains grown using nano-urea treatments yielded comparable or higher amounts of produce than those of using the traditional urea treatments with 100% application, while decreasing application dosage of the conventional fertilizers up to 25–50%. Photosynthesize rate and chlorophyll levels were found to increase by 16–28% and 18–31% for nano-urea treatments correspondingly. Improvement of nitrogen recovery efficiency by 22–35% was noted when using nano-urea as compared to traditional urea alone. Losses of ammonia through volatilization decreased by 40–48% in cases with nano-urea application. The efficiency of agronomic utilization of nitrogen has increased from 18 kg grain kg⁻¹ N in the case with traditional urea application to 24–27 kg grain kg⁻¹ N when using nano-urea treatments.
Conclusion: Nano-urea can be successfully used as the alternative, sustainable version of conventional nitrogen fertilizers in maize cultivation, as it both improves yields and efficiency of fertilizers used, and provides better environmental outcomes, and reduces the amounts of traditional fertilizers used.