Prilled urea (0.8-3.8 mm) has become as easy to get as granular urea in the last 1o years. It spreads very well, and weight-for-weight supplies 10 times as many particles as granular urea. This is an important issue on pastures at low application rates. For example, at 30kg N/ha, granular supplies about 45 granules/m2, prilled urea 400-500! In a typical dairy pasture in NZ, there are over 400 plants/m2.
I think the most difference are based in different physical properties, like fertilzer distribution and plant adhesion. Therefore with prilled urea you get a far better and quicker diffision and adsobtion of N to the soil. So you have far less N losses to the air.
Thanks for your comments Johann. Yes, we have found plant adhesion and foliar uptake to be an important part of the improvement in efficiency compared to granular urea. We will be presenting data on this next month, and hope to have the conference presentation up on ResearchGate soon after.
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