Fertilizer International 503 Jul-Aug 2021
31 July 2021
Innovation showcase
PRODUCT TECHNOLOGY
Innovation showcase
A selection of innovative products and technologies that have recently been brought to market.
2021 has been an excellent year for product innovation. In March, for example, the next generation of fertilizers were highlighted in a two-day webinar on slow- and controlled-release and stabilised fertilizers (SCRFs) – an event Fertilizer International supported as media partner.
The initial outcome of Next Gen Fertilizer Innovations Challenge, a competition sponsored by the US Environmental Protection Agency, The Fertilizer Institute and others, was also unveiled in March. Some 16 enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs) have now advanced to the next stage. The competition process is designed to identify commercial products that can reduce the environmental release of nitrogen and phosphorus from corn and other row crops in the US.
Fertilizer producers such as Borax, IFFCO and K+S have also released innovative new products in recent months.
Below, we highlight some of the major product innovations of the last 12 months.
New fertilizer technology prize fund
Last year, The Fertilizer Institute (TFI) joined together with the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Agriculture (USDA) to launch two competitions as part of a new multi-partner Next Gen Fertilizer Challenge initiative. Winners will receive up to $10,000 in prize money or help with greenhouse and field trials.
According to TFI, the aim is to “accelerate the development of innovative fertilizer product technologies and to increase the use of existing enhanced efficiency fertilizers (EEFs) that maintain or increase crop yields and reduce environmental impacts to air, land, and water”.
Lara Moody, TFI’s former vice president, explained the thinking behind the initiative1 : “There were several drivers. First, there is growing evidence of the effectiveness of these products in advancing agronomic and environmental benefits on the farm. Additionally, we see a need to increase use of these products on the farm. And finally, it is important to further support emerging product development and innovation within the fertilizer industry.”
The two competitions launched by the EPA and its partners in August 2020 are:
- Firstly, the EEFs: Environmental and Agronomic Challenge. This will identify existing EEFs currently on the market or near-market. These will need to meet – or exceed – certain environmental, agronomic and economic criteria.
- Secondly, the Next Gen Fertilizer Innovations Challenge. This will identify concepts for novel fertilizer technologies that are not yet near-market. These will need to show great potential for reducing the environmental effects of modern agriculture, while maintaining or increasing crop yields. They may include EEFs and other product technologies used alongside or in combination with commercial fertilizers.
New dawn for fertilizer efficiency?
Slow- and controlled-release and stabilised fertilizers (SCRFs) were the focus of a two-day webinar held on 15-16th March. The event – organised by New Ag International and supported by Fertilizer International as media partner – highlighted the latest improvements in fertilizer efficiency from BASF, Koch Agronomic Services, ICL Specialty Fertilizers, Milliken and Saviolife.
Speaking to New Ag International, Taylor Pursell, chairman of Pursell Agri-Tech, said: “We need to find ways to get the more efficient controlled release technologies used in specialty markets applicable in broad acre agriculture. The key will be reducing the costs to levels that have financial paybacks to farmers for adoption.
“What I hope to see in my lifetime is a shift to more nutrient efficiency resulting in higher yields, healthier foods that contain essential micronutrients, and at a low enough cost that it is a no brainer for the farmer to adopt.”
Mandatory use of inhibitors
Michael Basten, senior agronomist at Koch Agronomic Services highlighted the environmental benefits of urease inhibitors. In his view, these can play a vital role in meeting the targets of the EU’s Farm to Fork strategy. Germany and Denmark have both made the use of urea treated with urease inhibitors mandatory – a move which other EU member states are also considering.
Urease inhibitors deliver significant reduction in ammonia and CO2 equivalent emissions, as well as improving nitrogen use efficiency (NUE). Their broader adoption has dual benefits, suggests Basten, being able to improve the farmer’s return of investment for urea and lower the external costs of fertilizer use.
Embedded growth enhancers
The use of controlled-release fertilizers (CRF) in field-grown agriculture and forestry crops is on the rise, according to Ronald Clemens, global marketing manager at ICL Specialty Fertilizers.
Placement of CRFs in the planting hole of perennial crops, such as fruit trees and forest seedlings, is a cost-effective single fertilizer treatment that results in quicker development and growth – thereby shortening the time to maturity. Coated fertilizers also release nutrients predictably and consistently. This makes them an ideal tool for reducing nutrient losses and optimising nutrient use efficiency (NUE).
Using proprietary V-Factor technology, ICL has developed a unique range of Agroblen CRFs featuring embedded growth enhancers. These have been shown to improve root establishment and seedling growth. In eucalyptus, spruce and grape vine, for example, these novel CRFs improved growth by up to 20 percent in controlled experiments.
Maximising crop output, reducing climate impacts
Nitrous oxide is a very potent climate gas formed by soil bacteria involved in the nitrification process. Fortunately, treating urea with nitrification inhibitors can reduce these N2 O emission significantly, says Markus Schmid the head of BASF’s nitrogen management business, and also increase crop yield and quality.
BASF invented the nitrification inhibitor 3-4 dimethylpyrazole phosphate (DMPP) and remains its leading producer. This inhibitor is notably used by Compo Expert and EuroChem in their respective Novatec and Entec fertilizer product ranges. BASF also offers ready-to-use DMPP formulations. These are marketed for mineral fertilizers under the Vibelsol® brand and for organic fertilizers under the Vizura® brand.
BASF’s also offers the established and well-known urease inhibitor product Limus® . This combines two active ingredients – 75 percent N-(n-butyl)thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT) and 25 percent of a new compound N-(npropyl) thiophosphoric triamide (NPPT).
“Nitrogen fertilizers stabilised with urease- and nitrification inhibitors can play a key role in optimising the crop output per unit of fertilizer used,” says Markus Schmid1 . “They are the only technologies that directly reduce the impact from fertilizers on climate warming.”
Schmid adds: “Over 120 field trials on all continents and in a broad range of crops show that Limus® is 40 percent more effective than NBPT. That means at the same application rate of NBPT, Limus® delivers 2.1 percent higher yield.
“Alternatively, customers can achieve the same performance they have come to expect with NBPT by using Limus® at 60 percent of the NBPT use-rate.”
Pioneering slow-release technology
Thanks to an innovative manufacturing process, Sazolene slow-release nitrogen (SRN) products deliver a radical improvement in methylene-urea technology, says Federico Guaraldi, the commercial director of Saviolife. The Italian company is a leading manufacturer of both granular and liquid SRN products.
Sazolene39G ® is a slow-release nitrogen fertilizer comprised of polymer chains obtained from the condensation of urea molecules. By varying the chain length, Saviolife offers three different formulations (shorter, balance and longer) with nutrient release times ranging from 12 weeks to more than 10 months.
The liquid nitrogen fertilizer SazoleneSC ® contains about 60 percent nitrogen in methylene-urea form. The product is suitable for open-field, horticultural, fruit-bearing and nut crops – and can improve absorption, translocation and re-mobilisation of nitrogen, according to Saviolife. It can be used as a foliar fertilizer or in fertigation and can also be applied to soils. SazoleneSC ® is also compatible with most water-soluble fertilizers and other agrochemical solutions.
Winners of the Next Gen Fertilizer Innovations Challenge will receive a cash prize of at least $10,000 from a total prize purse of $65,000. They will also be invited to a showcase event to share ideas and spur innovation.
There is no cash prize for winners of the EEFs: Environmental and Agronomic Challenge. Instead, they will receive recognition from the EPA and USDA and benefit from a full scientific evaluation. They will also receive help in proceeding to greenhouse trials and eventually field trials, subject to positive results and available funds.
The two competitions were developed with input from corn grower representatives, individual fertilizer companies, university researchers, and environmental and industry groups. As well as working with TFI and USDA, the EPA is also collaborating with the International Fertilizer Development Center (IFDC), The Nature Conservancy (TNC) and the National Corn Growers Association (NCGA).
Lara Moody explained the initial focus on corn1 : “This stems from its importance and scale as a crop and for its use of nitrogen and phosphorus fertilizer. In the United States, corn is the largest user of phosphorus and potassium. And, as a commodity crop, economics of production are important. It’s likely that solutions that advance nutrient use efficiency in corn would be feasible and applicable to other cropping systems.”
The EPA unveiled the finalists from the first stage of EEFs: Environmental and Agronomic Challenge competition in March. A judging panel recommended that 16 EEF products and technologies move forward to greenhouse trials in the second stage of the competition (Table 1).
Winners of the two competitions will be announced in winter 2021. Identifying which products and technologies will emerges as winners is, however, hard to predict at this stage.
“Beyond traditional slow- and controlled-release and stabilised products, I think we could see entries from emerging biostimulants, organic matrices, multi-nutrient combinations and maybe even some type of EEF-biostimulant combination,” comments Lara Moody1 . “I can’t predict where the most exciting and potentially successful technologies will come from – for me, that’s part of the fun and excitement of the challenges.”
US Borax launches two new fertilizer products
US Borax, part of Rio Tinto, has launched two new fertilizer products on the market.
Anhybor® and Zincubor® have both been created for fertilizer manufacturers wishing to produce micronutrient-enriched compound fertilizers. The products are designed to address the micronutrient deficiencies faced by agricultural producers and meet increasing market demand for boron and zinc.
“A lack of boron in the soil is known to limit the development of a variety of crops, including corn, cotton, oil palm and soy,” commented US Borax. “Anhybor® and Zincubor® were developed to help these crops reach their yield potential by providing the optimal amount of micronutrients.”
Anhybor® is manufactured from borax using a dehydration and fusion process. The product can be used to coat the different fertilizer constituents of NPK blends, with the aid of a binder material, or applied directly to soils. For compound fertilizers, the high boron content of Anhybor® is an advantage, according to US Borax, as less product is required to reach the target boron level.
Zincubor® is a two-in-one product that helps avoid the negative effects of zinc deficiency. These include ‘rosetting’ and the characteristic clustering of small leaves at the top of plants. It combines zinc and boron in “a perfect 2:1 ratio to meet the exact zinc and boron demands of most crops”, says the company. Zincubor® can also be used as a micronutrient coating for compound fertilizers, with the aid of a binder, or applied directly to soils. Valuably, the product can also be used to produce suspension fertilizers.
Frank Wawzros, research and innovation manager at US Borax, said “With these two new products, US Borax broadens the reach of the solutions it provides producers to achieve the maximum yield potential of their crops by addressing zinc and boron deficiencies. The proven performance, stability, and efficacy of Anhybor® and Zincubor® , combined with the flexibility both products afford distributors and retailers, makes them excellent additions to the market.”
IFFCO launches nanotechnology fertilizer
The Indian Farmers Fertilizer Cooperative Limited (IFFCO) has delivered its first commercial consignment of a new nanotechnology fertilizer.
The first batch of the company’s new nano urea liquid was supplied to farmers in Uttar Pradesh in the first week of June. The patented technology behind this first-of-its-kind product was developed at IFFCO’s Nano Biotechnology Research Center in Kalol in Gujarat.
IFFCO will mass produce half-litre bottles of the new liquid from three under-construction production plants – Kalol, Gujurat and Aonla and Phulpur in Uttar Pradesh. Initially, these sites will provide enough capacity to produce 140 million bottles, although IFFCO plans to ramp up annual production to 320 million bottles by 2023. The company calculates that producing nano urea at this scale will be enough to replace 13.7 million t/a of standard urea production.
India looks set to consume around 35 million tonnes of domestically-produced and imported commodity urea in 2020/21. Nutrient use efficiency is, however, surprisingly low. Only 30-50 percent of nitrogen applied to soils as urea prills or granules ends up being utilised by crops. Instead, the majority of the nitrogen contained in urea is lost to the environment due to leaching, volatilisation, run-off and other processes.
Currently, India farmers also have a financial incentive to overuse urea as it attracts significantly higher government subsidies relative to other types of fertilizer.
IFFCO’s new nano urea liquid, in contrast, is a much more efficient nitrogen product. Each bottle – which contains 40,000 ppm of nitrogen – delivers enough crop nutrients to replace at least one 45 kilo bag of standard commodity urea, according to IFFCO.
The urea particles present are around 30 nanometres in size (one nanometre = one billionth of a metre). Because of this, the surface area to volume ratio of nano urea is about 10,000 times higher than conventional granular urea.
Nano urea is a foliar product applied to plant leaves. “Due to the ultra-small size and surface properties, nano urea gets absorbed by the plants when sprayed on their leaves. Upon penetration these nanoparticles reach parts of the plant where nitrogen is required and release nutrients in a controlled manner,” IFFCO said in a statement.
IFFCO has tested the efficacy of nano urea by carrying out 11,000 field trials on more than 94 crops across India. These trials have shown that providing urea in nano form is an effective way of meeting crop nitrogen requirements . On average, it was found to increase crop yields by eight percent.
IFFCO believes its new nano urea product can avoid many of the environmental problems associated with the use of standard granular urea, such as nitrous oxide and ammonia emissions, soil acidification and water eutrophication.
As well as cutting environmental losses, IFFCO says nano urea is more sustainable in other ways: “It will reduce the input cost to farmer. Due to its small size, the bottle can be kept in the pocket and will significantly bring down the cost of logistics and warehousing also.”
The new nano urea liquid is also competitively priced, with each bottle costing 240 rupees – 10 percent below the cost of an equivalent standard bag of urea.
Nano fertilizers have been heralded as a potential game changer for the market, although this does hinge on their acceptance by farmers. IFFCO is therefore planning a massive nationwide campaign to demonstrate and train farmers about the usage and application of nano urea.
Shri Dilip Shangani, IFFCO’s vice chairman, said: “Nano urea is a product of the 21st Century, and the need of the hour is to keep the environment – soil, air and water – safe for future generations while securing food for all.”
IFFCO has also started field trials for a nano diammonium phosphate (DAP) product it has developed.
Two new speciality products from K+S
Germany’s K+S is continuing to diversify its fertilizer portfolio. The major potash producer recently introduced two new speciality products to the market – Roll-Kali and K+BooZter.
Through its ‘Project S’ initiative, the company is also developing a novel potassium fertilizer that incorporates sulphur and is enriched with magnesium and essential micronutrients.
Roll-Kali (48% K2 O, 4% MgO, 10% SO3 ) provides a source of highly concentrated potassium, alongside valuable magnesium and sulphur supplied by the natural mineral kieserite. All three nutrients are completely water-soluble and directly available to plants, independent of soil pH.
The product was launched in 2019 and is specifically designed for high quality bulk blends and precision farming. According to K+S, it makes an excellent potassium fertilizer for chloride-tolerant crops which also require magnesium and sulphur.
Its most special feature, however, is its spherical shape. Because drum granulation is used instead of compaction-granulation, Roll-Kali consists of highly uniform and perfectly round granules. The resulting product, with a bulk density of around 950 kg/m³ and an average diameter (d50) of 3.5mm, is ideally suited for bulk blending with nitrogen or phosphate fertilizers.
Roll-Kali granules have been designed to match other constituents of fertilizer blends (e.g., CAN, ASS, SSA or TSP) in terms of their shape, size and bulk density. This avoids segregation during transport, storage and application. Indeed, field application tests have shown that Roll-Kali spreads very evenly alongside other blend constituents at the desired mixing ratio, even at broadcasting widths of up to 30 metres. This ensures the optimal distribution of nutrients across the field.
Roll-Kali, although designed as a bulk blend component, also offers advantages in direct application. Its round shape is far less sensitive to wind, enabling fertilizer grains to be spread with great accuracy. The product can be applied to fields with an extremely precise lateral distribution even at spreading widths of over 40 metres.
K+S also recently introduced the potassium-based speciality fertilizer K+BooZter (54% K2 O, 1% B and 1% Zn). This innovative new product is enriched with zinc and boron in both fast- and slow-release forms. Uniquely, these micronutrients are incorporated and compacted within each single granule. Because of this, K+BooZter offers both higher nutrient use efficiency and better broadcasting precision in the field, compared to similar products on the market.
K+BooZter is suitable for a wide range of chloride-tolerant crops, including soybean, oilseed rape, cereals, corn and sugar beet. The product can be broadcasted directly or used as part of a blend with nitrogen and phosphate fertilizers. It is able to improve biomass generation in crops by increasing root formation and simultaneously improving the nutrient and water use efficiency of the plant. K+BooZter also helps to ensure plant health, by boosting resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses, as well as enhancing seed and fruit quality.
In recent decades, soil nutrients have been depleted worldwide by intensive agriculture and have often fallen below deficiency thresholds – especially in areas where nutrients are not being replenished by fertilizer applications.
Sulphur is a key nutrient at particular high risk of depletion. On one side, due to flue gas desulphurisation, soils are no longer being replenished by sulphur deposition from the air. On the other side, sulphur is absent from many commonly used high-analysis fertilizers. As a result, sulphur deficiency – and correspondingly agricultural demand for sulphur – is rising in many areas worldwide.
Sulphur has well known agronomic benefits. It improves plant photosynthesis, for example, and increases both the protein content and oil quality of crop products. It also improves plant health by strengthening resistance to abiotic and biotic stresses. This ultimately benefits crop yields and quality.
K+S Minerals and Agriculture GmbH has launched ‘Project S’ to address the widespread problem of soil sulphur deficiency and satisfy increasing market demand for sulphur fertilizers. The project is developing a new type of potassium fertilizer that can supply crops with sufficient sulphur. It will also be enriched with valuable magnesium and essential micronutrients. The target market for this new product areas where high protein and high oil content crops are cultivated such as soybean, maize, oilseed rape and sunflower.
The new product is being designed to fulfil the following requirements:
- Rapidly replenish the potassium needed for plant growth. This helps crops increase their nutrient and water uptake – which, in turn, is conducive to high biomass formation and yield improvements.
- Incorporate both slow- and fast-release sulphur. This guarantees sulphur availability to plants during the whole season, from the initial growth stage to the generative (flowering and fruiting) stage.
- Consist of round, homogenous granules. This ensures even and efficient dispersion of nutrients across the field during broadcasting. The physical properties of granules also need to compatible with other fertilizers when used as part of a blend.
References
