Teagasc has advised farmers to stick with protected urea, despite claims of issues with striping and quality this year.

Research from trials at Johnstown Castle in Co Wexford shows that there is no significant difference between grass dry matter yield when comparing CAN with protected urea.

"Protected urea has generated a fair amount of conversation and debate over the year, it's fair to say," researcher at Johnstown Castle Dr Patrick Forrestal said at Teagasc's national dairy conference in Limerick on Wednesday 27 November.

"Any fertiliser that we use, it needs to produce the goods in terms of growing the grass, but also as an industry we do face challenges there to show good progress on the environmental metrics and these include the reduction of greenhouse gas emissions and this is why protected urea is a tool which is important for us."

Issues

Forrestal acknowledged the issues farmers had with the spreadability of protected urea and argued that there needs to be a focus on spreader calibration and the physical quality of the fertiliser for 2025.

Protection, he said, on nitrogen reduces the level of nitrogen loss as ammonia.

"The more nitrogen that you're losing on farm as ammonia, the less of it that's there to grow grass. So, essentially, that ammonia loss is an environmental concern, but it's also eating into your nitrogen allowance to grow grass," he said.