New Organic Farming Approach Developed with Nanofertilizers for Better Crop Yield

The modern agricultural industry is now becoming more aware of the harmful effects of chemical fertilizers. Many organic farming approaches are continuously shifting to better solutions while keeping and even improving the qualities of crop yields from conventional methods.

Problems in Organic Farming

Organic farming uses natural manures that could help the environment and its soil structure at its peak for the growth of crops. But even though organic farming is a promising way of preserving ecosystems, most of its known processes produce a lower volume of yields compared to traditional systems.

In a new study, experts developed a way for organic farming to constantly conserve the lot areas while it gives outcomes that exceed the yields of available methods we use today, ultimately answering to the minimal distribution of crops and meeting the global demands.

Experts developed a new kind of fertilizers through nanotechnology. By combining the elements such as zinc and nitrogen, they created a nanofertilizer that works very well with organic farming.

These nanofertilizers were tested and proven to help farmers get quality oil and cereal crops compared to the chemical fertilizers used in many agricultural practices. When the nanofertilizers were added with compounds from organic manure and biofertilizers, experts discovered a stunning growth in plants and a higher yield of crops, AZoNano reports.

Contrary to popular belief, traditional farming methods hurt the environment by exerting nitrogen and using phosphate-based fertilizers. These compounds destroy the methods they are buried in, resulting in an uncontrolled population and lesser nutritional intake of plants.

Nanotechnology has been utilized in many scientific fields to get better results and keep outcomes at their best. In farming, they could also work to increase the plant's nutritional uptake and lessen its release. Experts of the new research equipped the nano fertilizers with principles that are suited to improve the development of plants, including biotechnology, chemical engineering, and the usage of polymer structures.

Nanofertilizers Improved Plant Development and Crop Yields Nurtured Through Organic Farming

The efficacy of nanofertilizers were tested with the help of crops such as pearl millet, wheat, sesame, and mustard. Each crop was compared through their productivity rates in separate methods of conventional farming that uses chemical fertilizers (T1) and an organic farming practice that uses nanofertilizers, animal manure, and biofertilizers (T2).

The morphology and other physical properties of the nanofertilizer's particles were observed throughout the experiments by using electron microscopy, as their mass drives the efficacy of farming and the development of the plants.

Data from imaging showed that the nitrogen and zinc particles had average diameters of 28.3 and 22.2 nanometers, respectively.

T2 treatment showed a higher spikelet number in wheat crops, increasing by 7.03 percent than its normal rate. Each plant also showed 12.5 percent higher tillers using the same treatment. Pearl millet had a 4.9 percent higher ear head length, sesame's capsule had a 6.71 percent increase per plant, and mustard had a 9.1 percent siliquae increase.

In yields, the T2 treatment produced a 5.35 percent yield increase in wheat, 24.2 percent in sesame,4.2 percent in pearl millet, and 8.4 percent in mustard.

The study was published in the journal Scientific Reports, titled "Effect of nitrogen and zinc nanofertilizer with the organic farming practices on cereal and oil seed crops."

Check out more news and information on Nanotechnology in Science Times.