Black Urea®
Black Urea® is the leading technology of greater nitrogen use efficiency. Black Urea® is specifically formulated to reduce losses, up to 25%-30%. So more nitrogen is available for your crops than with un-coated urea.
Sustained Release Of Nitrogen
- Reduced losses of fertiliser (and your money) to the environment (leaching, volatilisation, denitrification, run off, wind).
- Nitrogen is stabilised in the soil as ammonium and protein (microbes).
- Independent research has shown under varying moisture conditions over 10 week cycles, there is a 40 - 60% lower loss with BLACK UREA® as a top dressed fertiliser than with ordinary urea.
The Losses
Why You Need Black Urea®
Just one example of losses is the dead zone caused by nutrient enrichment from the Mississippi River, particularly nitrogen and phosphorous. The Gulf of Mexico dead zone is an area of hypoxic (link to USGS definition) (less than 2 ppm dissolved oxygen) waters at the mouth of the Mississippi River. Its area varies in size, but can cover up to 6,000-7,000 square miles.
CSIRO publishing say: “Plant Uptake for a range of crops and pastures in Australia varies from 6% to 59% of the Nitrogen Applied”, or this “As stated around the world we cannot meet the production challenges when only 30-35% of nitrogen applied is used efficiently by the plant and only 20-25% phosphorus applied is used efficiently.” (REF: Kingenta China, 2016 Controlled and Slow Release Conference Beijing China).
What are growers saying....
My name is Mark Fritz. My wife Judy and I farm south of Bundaberg on light sand and sandy loam soils, consisting of between 90-95% sand and 5-10% clay content with a CEC average of about 2.5 to 3.5 and pH ranging from 6.2 to 6.8. We grow sugarcane, seedless watermelons and processing potatoes for Smith’s Crisps.
We mainly use the Black Urea® in the potato crop. Ever since ammonium nitrate became hard to purchase we had been looking for a replacement.
Along with calcium nitrate, ammonium sulphate and potassium nitrate, Black Urea® is included in our nitrogen program for the potatoes which is anywhere between 180 to 220 units of nitrogen per crop.
We have been using Black Urea® now for about 5 years and see it as a very important part of the program. It is softer than straight urea, due to the carbon coating, which acts to buffer the release of N and helps reduce microbial harm.
By using Black Urea® it is not leaching as much as urea whether through heavy rainfall or over irrigation, and does not volatilize as much when left exposed short term. We have not hesitated in continuing to purchase Black Urea® year after year. I think it is a marvelous product and if it were not available I wouldn’t use urea again unless I could add the carbon coating to it somehow.
Mark Fritz, Bundaberg QLD
