Why we evaluate fertiliser products in NCRI

Fake fertilisers have flooded Nigerian markets, what is your institute doing to identify the genuine products for the benefit of farmers?National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI) Badegi is the coordinating research institute of eight states that include Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Plateau, Taraba and the FCT and by virtue of being the coordinating institution, it is […]

Fake fertilisers have flooded Nigerian markets, what is your institute doing to identify the genuine products for the benefit of farmers?
National Cereals Research Institute (NCRI) Badegi is the coordinating research institute of eight states that include Niger, Kwara, Kogi, Benue, Plateau, Taraba and the FCT and by virtue of being the coordinating institution, it is conferred with, among others, the responsibility of fertiliser testing and recommendation. We evaluate fertiliser products especially the new ones coming into the market. Once the products come into the market we evaluate them holistically to see how effective they are. It is on this basis that we write our reports and findings to the companies that are producing such fertiliser products. They come with it here, we evaluate, and write our report and give to them. Some products are in solid form while others have been coming to us as liquid products such as Confermine by Growth and Farmers Delight. They come in several brands. So, we take our time to test and recommend. Because of the sensitive nature of the issue,we are always very careful.
Do you only test and make recommendations or you also analyse the product?
First of all, we analyse the products and then test how effective they are with respect to the chemical contents claimed by the manufacturers. In some cases our findings used to be in variance with whatever the manufacturers claimed. So, we do recommend to them, like Crystal Tag for instance, when it came, it came with a lot of labels on its contents. By merely looking  you can just jump at it because of what the contents indicated but by the time we analysed the product we discovered that it was another ball game altogether. So we advised them on the need for the product to be upgraded and after some time they re-submitted the product, we went back to the field, we tested it and found that it has actually been upgraded. The first product that came was in 2001/02. I think they re-submitted the product three years ago. We evaluated it and we actually discovered they have upgraded it. In fact, it competed with one of the standard products we have in the market. These are some of the examples of fertiliser testing and evaluation that we have done in the past. We have done several others like I said in the past 20 years. Many scientists who were coordinating research programmes and who have by now retired carried out a lot of testing and evaluation and the results are also available.
Do governments bring their fertilizer for testing?
Yes, they do. Niger State Fertilizer Company (NIFEC) is a product of Niger State government. When NIFEC was first brought to us, it was the Niger State government that wrote to the institute officially for evaluation. Most often than not, these products come through government, either through the state or through the Federal Ministry of Agriculture. Occasionally, individuals like Crystal Tag do bring. Both individuals and government bring their product for testing.
What is the result of the fertiliser products coming from the Federal Ministry of Agriculture?
Normally, we just evaluate and write our report. I don’t know whether I am competent to talk about the quality of some of these products that were submitted. But like Carfermine and Farmers Delight, they come in liquid form. We tested and found them valuable products in terms of quality. They may not meet up to 100 percent of what the manufacturers claimed but cannot be totally written off.
Do you conduct fertiliser tests in the field or laboratory?
Normally, when they bring products they will ask us to evaluate at certain rate, for example apply 10 kilogrammes or 30 kilogrammes per hectare. But at institutional level what we do is to go two steps backward and two steps forward from their recommendations because if we say we should evaluate it at a particular level, a lot of things could be happening over and above what they asked for. So we make sure we include two levels above and two levels backward so that we now have a comprehensive picture of what is happening over the range of values that we have. So on this basis, what our results are, we will now say yes that at the rate you said, this is our findings and at other rates that we used the result are like this.
What do you have to say on the problem of general recommendation for fertiliser application?
This is something that has been going on for a very long time. There is this belief that fertiliser recommendation from government agencies such as ours is a blanket recommendation. Now there is need for specific recommendation. Rice for instance is a classical example. If you are planting upland rice they say apply 60 : 30 : 30 of NPK, (that is 60 of Nitrogen, 30 phosphorus and 30 potassium).  These are the nutrient elements the plant needs,therefore,and became a general recommendation. If you go to any agro-geopolitical zone, may be if you go to Birnin Kebbi, Badegi or the South West we can still use this general recommendation but practical experience has shown that the situation in Birnin Kebbi, Badegi and many other places differs. General recommendation mode is not reliable.