Synthesis of Coated Urea and Its Release Pattern

The main aim of this paper was to develop three different type of urea fertilizer coating with ethyl cellulose and starch-super absorbent polymer and to study their effectiveness in the release of nitrogen. The synthesis and characterization of the coated fertilizer was carried out in Department of Nanoscience and Technology, TNAU, Coimbatore-03, India. A column experiment was also set up at Radioisotope Laboratory in TNAU, Coimbatore-03, India for a period of 30 days. The column experiment consists of 5 treatments and 3 replications with a Completely Randomized Block (CRD) design with level of significance of 0.05%. The treatments consist of control, uncoated urea, Ethyl cellulose (EC), Starch-Super absorbent polymer (SAP) and EC+Strach-SAP coating. Double coated urea (EC+Starch-SAP) showed the slowest nitrogen release pattern among the three coating types with a release of only 40% of nitrogen in the first day of incubation and a gradual release of nitrogen till the 20th day.