Response of summer pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.) to foliar application of nano urea

Introduction

Pearl millet (Pennisetum glaucum L.) is an important millet crop of India. It is commonly known as bajra or bajri, which is belong to Poaceae family. It is the upmost widely grown staple food of majority of poor and small land holders in Asia and Africa. It is consumed as both feed and fodder for livestock. It is a C 4 plant with high photosynthetic efficiency and high dry matter production capacity. It is well adapted to grow under most adverse agro-climatic conditions characterized by drought, low soil fertility and high temperatures. Pearl millet grain contains about 11.6% protein, 5% fat, 67% carbohydrates and 2.7% minerals (Gill, 1991) [5] . Pearl millet is considered as more efficient in utilization of soil moisture and has a higher level of heat tolerance than sorghum and maize. It has the maximum potential of all the millets and is mainly grown in drought prone areas and marginal soils. Because of its tolerance to difficult growing conditions such as drought, low soil fertility and high temperature, it can be grown in areas where other cereal crops would not survive (Asodariya et al., 2021) [2] . Urea contributes about 82% of the total fertilizer consumption in India and about 55% of the total fertilizer nitrogen consumed in the world. Around 30-40% of nitrogen from urea fertilizer is utilized by plants and the rest gets wasted due to quick chemical transformation as a result of runoff, volatilization, leaching and denitrification, thereby low use efficiency. Whereas, nano urea has high nitrogen use efficiency and also it is environment friendly. Currently, modern agriculture is heavily supported by the use of high rates of agrochemicals. Synthetic chemical fertilizers are used for the optimal growth and productivity of crops, but they are not successful to enhance plant nutrient use efficiency and crop productivity (Ajith kumar et al., 2021) [1] . Though the nutrient deficiency and the responses of nutrient are reported, no systematic approaches has been made to find out the yield losses due to deficiency or toxicity of a particular elements. Nitrogen is an essential nutrient that is required by plants in great quantities particularly in pearl millet. Nitrogen is a nutrient with high mobility in the soil-plant-atmosphere system, and it is easily lost through volatilization or leaching. Moreover, nitrogen fertilizers have low efficiency and are expensive to synthesize, and in addition to raising the cost of the final product, it can contaminate the environment. The foliar application of N as urea or DAP showed higher fertilizer efficiency than soil application. In comparison to urea the uptake efficiency of nano urea is more. It is thus, required in lesser quantity as compared to the conventional urea fertilizer to fulfill plant's nitrogen requirement. All India efficacy trials have been conducted on 20 ICAR research institutes and State Agricultural Universities on 43 crops. It has been recorded in the trials that nano urea increases crop productivity and can reduce the requirement of conventional urea by 50%. Further, application of nano fertilizers at critical growth stages of crops improves yield, biomass, soil health and nutritional quality of the produce (Kumar et al., 2021) [8] . Application of conventional fertilizer along with foliar spray of nano urea increased maize yield reported by Rathore et al. (2022) [12] . Farmers can easily carry bottles of nano urea over bulkier urea bags, which have a substantial influence on relative logistics and warehousing costs (Meena and Verma, 2022) [9] .

Materials and Methods

A field experiment was conducted at Pearl millet research station, Junagadh Agricultural University, Jamnagr (22º47' N, 70º07' E, 18.00 m above the mean sea level), Gujarat for two consecutive years from 2024 to 2025. The site is situated in the North Saurashtra agro-climatic region of Gujarat under Gujarat plains and hills zone of India. The climate of this region is semi-arid and sub-tropical with fairly dry and hot summer. The rainy season commences in the second fortnight of June and ends in September, with an average annual rainfall of 550 mm. July and August are the peak months of rainfall. Winter season sets in the month of November and continues till the middle of February. December and January are the coldest months of winter with the mean minimum temperature ranging from 15ºC to 17ºC. Summer season commences in the second fortnight of February and ends in the middle of June. The experimental soil was clayey (14.78% sand, 17.63% silt and 67.59% clay) in texture and slightly alkaline in reaction with pH 7.9 and EC 0.43 dS/m. It was moderately fertile being low in organic carbon (4.1 g/kg), medium in available nitrogen (203.2 kg/ha) and phosphorus (10.6 kg/ha) and high in available potassium (282.5 kg/ha). The initial DTPA extractable Fe and Zn were 7.0 and 0.68 mg/kg respectively. The soil moisture content at field capacity and permanent wilting point in the upper 30 cm soil depth were 28.50 and 16.70%, respectively. In 100% RDN, 1/3 of nitrogen each at basal, 25 and 45 DAS was used. In the remaining treatments, 40 kg N/ha was applied as basal and remaining dose of N at 25 DAS was used. 60 kg P 2 O 5 /ha was applied to all the treatments. Water volume 300 L/ha for first spray and 500 L/ha for second spray was used. Nano urea of IFFCO was used. The statistically data was examined using the approach for analysis of variance as outlined by Gomez and Gomez (1984) [6] . At a 5% probability level, the crucial difference (CD) was used to test for differences in the treatment means.

Results and Discussion Effect on grain and fodder yields

The data furnished in Table - 2025. This is due to the combined application of conventional and nano urea ensured optimum and balanced nutrient availability during the crop period. Due to smaller size and larger effective surface area of nano particles which can easily penetrate into the plant and lead to better uptake of nitrogen. The higher uptake results in maximum growth of plant parts and metabolic processes like photosynthesis that increase photosynthates accumulation and its translocation to the economical parts of the plant which results in increased growth, yield attributing characters and finally yield by amplifying the translocation of assimilates to grains. The present findings are in close agreement with the results obtained by Srivastava and Singh (2023) [15] , Vegda et al. (2024) [17] , Rajesh et al. (2021) [10] , Bhargavi and Sundari (2022) [3] , Ranjan et al. (2022) [11] . [13] and Sharma et al. (2022) [14] . Nano fertilizer demonstrates a synergistic effect when used alongside conventional fertilizer, enhancing the plant cells capacity for nutrient absorption. This in turn promotes optimal growth of various plant components and vital metabolic processes like photosynthesis, leading to an accumulation of higher levels of photosynthates. As a results, the translocation of these photosynthates to economically vital plant parts results in an improvement in yield attributing parameters. These results are in conformity with the findings of Ranjan et al. (2022) [11] , Karanjikar et al. (2023) [7] , Udapudi et al. (2023) [16] and Dobariya et al. (2025) [4] . (2022) [13] . The same treatment T 2 i.e. 100% RDN recorded higher soil available nitrogen in pooled results (226.14 kg/ha) followed by treatment T 6 i.e. application of 75% RDN + foliar spray of nano urea 4 ml/L at 30 & 45 DAS (219.83 kg/ha). The higher availability of N in soil at higher fertility level might be due to application of higher dose of fertilizer in soil and uptake of nutrient might not have substantiated the availability, resulting in higher available N in soil. Similar results have been advocated by Dobariya et al. (2025) [4] . [11] and Vegda et al. (2024) [17] .

Conclusion

On the basis of the results of two years field experimentation, it is concluded that application of 75% RDN (40 kg N/ha as basal and 50 kg N/ha at 25 DAS) followed by foliar application of nano urea 4 ml/L at 30 and 45 days after sowing to summer pearl millet produced higher grain and fodder yields. This reduces 25 per cent of nitrogen quantity used in summer pearl millet. Alternatively, application of 75% RDN (40 kg N as basal 50 kg N/ha at 25 DAS) followed by foliar application of 2 per cent urea at 30 and 45 days after sowing for getting higher grain yield and net return.

References

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