A Calgary company that produces a line of fertilizer-efficiency additives has a new concentrated urease inhibitor technology that reduces costs of advanced efficiency-fertilizer products.
The latest product in Soilgenic Technologies’ lineup is Visio-N Supra, which contains 40 percent N-(n-Butyl)thiophosphoric triamide (NBPT).
Jeff Ivan, president and chief executive officer of Soilgenic Technologies, said NBPT has previously been available to as high as a 26.6 percent formulation.
“It basically will set a new standard in terms of high concentrated NBPT formulations, which means you can go with lower rates of product onto the urea, and it will still give you the active ingredients that you require for above-ground loss,” Ivan said.
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Soilgenic uses its FLX-Sol penetrating solvent technology that has a low viscosity and low surface tension that also allows for reduced application rates with the high-concentrated NBPT formulation.
“That allows the active ingredients to penetrate into the urea, and at the same time it has a very low viscosity and low surface tension, which is very important. So, if you’re wanting to coat your urea at low rates, it will basically dissipate quickly as urea is being coated,” Ivan said.
He said Visio-N Supra can be applied with excellent coverage as cold as – 20 C, while other treatments typically begin to gel at around 0 C.
“It starts to thicken up at about – 25, so I don’t know many blend plants that operate in much cooler conditions,” Ivan said.
“When it’s 10 or 15 below and they’re doing blends to send to the farm. It’ll work very well and coat fertilizer without trouble, and where other technologies tend to gel up at zero.”
Visio-N Supra also has Soilgenic’s company’s stabilization technology that improves product quality by preventing the NBPT from falling out.
Soilgenic also carries a line of fertilizer efficiency additives for all fertilizer types, including urea, UAN, anhydrous ammonia, AS, ammoniated phosphates (MAP-DAP), and manure.
“Our goal is not just to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and environmental impact, but ultimately, it’s how do we improve the farmers’ return on investment? Let’s lower the cost of enhanced efficiency technologies. Let’s make them more efficient so that they become a standard,” Ivan said.
The United Nations has a policy to reduce nitrogen loss by 50 percent by 2030, which is why countries like Canada and the Netherlands are moving to reduce emissions from nitrogen fertilizer.
He said this is just the beginning and there will be more emphasis on the efficiency of fertilizers.
“The reason being is that 70 percent of agricultural greenhouse gas emissions come from fertilizers, and 40 percent is on the production side of it, the production and transportation. Sixty percent is on the use of the nitrogen fertilizers, so that’s your below ground and nitrous oxide emissions that are created,” Ivan said.
“I would say that all fertilizers at some point will contain enhanced efficiency technologies built into it because if you look at nitrogen loss as a whole globally, the UN states that 46 percent of nitrogen is lost to the environment.”
