Measuring the Effect of Nimin-coated Urea Application on Yield and Nitrogen Use Efficiency (NUE) in Rice

Urea fertilizer is subjected to substantial loss while applied in the rice field. For solving this problem, nimincoated urea is being used as slow release N-fertilizer on rice crop. The experiment was conducted at farmer's field on sandy clay loam soil with low N status. In this experiment five treatments were taken up viz. Control (without N); Urea @ 60 kg N ha⁻¹; Urea @ 80 kg N ha⁻¹; Nimin coated Urea @ 60 kg N ha⁻¹; Nimin coated Urea @ 80 kg N ha⁻¹. The test crop used in the experiment was rice (cv. Lalat). Application of ninim coated urea had significant effect over granular urea on yield and attributing characters such as no. of tillers per hill and no. of grains per panicle. The highest grain yield of rice (40.7 q ha⁻¹) was recorded under the treatment No. 5 (Nimin coated urea applied @ 80 kg N ha⁻¹) with a yield increase of 20 per cent over granular urea having same rate of applied urea. The highest total N uptake was observed under the same treatment. The apparent N recovery by rice crop was the highest (61%) under the treatment which received nimin coated urea @ 60 kg N ha⁻¹. Hence nimin coated urea was found substantially use efficiency of urea N fertilizer on rice crop.