High-efficiency fertilizers gain traction in India as global NPK shortages deepen
India’s farm sector is promoting high nutrient-use-efficiency fertilizers as a response to global NPK shortages, rising input prices and mounting food-security risks.
As disruptions in global fertilizer supply deepen, India’s farm sector is giving more attention to products marketed as high nutrient-use-efficiency, or NUE, fertilizers. A report in The Hindu BusinessLine says geopolitical tensions and shortages of core NPK inputs are adding fresh pressure to food production, and that newer formulations are being positioned as a way to protect yields while using less of conventional fertilizer.
The central claim is that these products can cut the use of bulk and water-soluble NPK fertilizers by 25 to 50 per cent while maintaining balanced crop nutrition. The article argues that they reduce nutrient losses through leaching, volatilisation and runoff. For India, that matters because expensive and uncertain supplies of nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium directly affect the economics of producing wheat, rice and maize.
The report stresses that conventional fertilizer regimes can lose as much as 50 to 70 per cent of applied nutrients in some situations, while more efficient products are expected to improve uptake and reduce dependence on volatile imports. In that framing, NUE is being presented not only as a way to save resources in the short term, but also as part of a longer strategy to make crop production more resilient as climate variability, supply-chain instability and input inflation intensify.
Environmental and public-health concerns are also part of the case for change. Citing India’s Ministry of Jal Shakti, the article says more than half of the country’s districts have already crossed permissible nitrate limits in groundwater. It also notes that India is the world’s second-largest emitter of nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas linked heavily to nitrogen fertilizer use that can remain in the atmosphere for about 120 years and has roughly 300 times the warming impact of carbon dioxide.
Supporters of these higher-efficiency products argue that scaling them up will require closer coordination with state governments and agricultural extension networks, faster regulatory approvals, stronger farmer education and continued investment in research. Without that, the shift would remain confined to a narrow segment of the market and would do little to ease pressure on subsidies, soil quality and water resources.
The article further cites estimates that some of these platforms can lift yields by 10 to 40 per cent while reducing dependence on imported ammonia, phosphorus and potash. That is the broader significance of the current debate: in India, NUE fertilizers are being framed not as a niche technical upgrade, but as part of a wider response to food-security pressure, the need to preserve fertilizer availability for the next rabi season and the drive to stabilise the farm economy under external shocks.