Indian Farmers Fertiliser Cooperative Ltd. (IFFCO) has signed Memorandums of Understanding (MOU) with India’s National Fertilizers Ltd. (NFL) and RCF for the “transfer of technology” of Nano Urea Liquid.
Under the agreements, NFL and RCF will secure the technology to produce Nano Urea Liquid, a new product developed by IFFCO, and launched on May 31 (GM June 4, p. 32).
The Indian cooperative, which is based in India’s Karnataka state, began production of the new product in June, and by July 25, had produced 828,000 500 ml bottles of Nano Urea Liquid, according to a report by Outlook India news magazine, citing India’s Minister of Chemicals and Fertilisers Mansukh Mandaviya.
Under this week’s agreements, NFL and RCF will establish new Nano Urea Liquid production units and it is planned to roll out the technology transfer to other Indian public sector fertilizer companies in order to ramp up production of the new product and ensure a consistent supply resulting in its faster adoption, IFFCO said. The Indian cooperative will not receive any royalty payments for the transfer of the technology.
IFFCO has conducted over 11,000 farmer field trials using Nano Urea liquid in India. It has said the new product could cut conventional urea use by at least 50 percent.
Nano Urea Liquid product was indigenously developed after many years of research by IFFCO’s scientists and engineers through a proprietary technology developed at Nano Biotechnology Research Centre, Kalol.
IFFCO also signed a MOU in June with the Organization of Brazilian Cooperatives (OCB), Brazil’s national confederation of cooperatives, for setting up a Nano Urea fertilizer plant in Brazil with mutual collaboration (GM June 18, p. 31), and a MOU with Argentina’s Cooperative Confederation of Argentina (Cooperar) and Instituto Nacional de Asociativismo y Economia Social (INAES) to study the feasibility of establishing a Nano Urea plant in that country (GM June 25, p. 32).