The government informed the lower house of Parliament that Indigenous manufactures and producers of urea are allowed to produce Neem Coated Urea (NCU) upto maximum of their total production of subsidized urea and to restrict the extra MRP to be charged by the companies selling Neem Coated Urea to the extent of 5% of the existing MRP of urea i.e. Rs. 5360/- per MT.
Further, it has been made mandatory for all the indigenous producers of urea to produce minimum 75% of their total production of subsidized urea as NCU for the year 2015-16.
Research on NCU by Indian Agricultural Research Institute, New Delhi indicated increase in the rice grain yield by 6.3% to 11.9% over normal urea.
NCU reduces consumption of urea by 10-15%. As far as environment is concerned, normal prilled Urea use-efficiency is 30% (Paddy crop) to 50% (Wheat crop) i.e. 50%-70% urea is lost/leached down resulting in nitrate pollution in underground water.
In case of NCU, this loss is significantly reduced by about 10% – 15%, thereby resulting in less pollution of underground water. Moreover, the usage of NCU is environmental friendly.
