<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><ns2:project xmlns:ns1="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/gtr/api" xmlns:ns2="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/gtr/api/project" xmlns:ns3="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/gtr/api/fund" xmlns:ns4="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/gtr/api/person" xmlns:ns5="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/gtr/api/project/outcome" xmlns:ns6="http://gtr.rcuk.ac.uk/gtr/api/organisation" ns1:created="2026-06-22T07:57:45Z" ns1:href="http://gtr.ukri.org/gtr/api/projects/543FD4B2-BE73-45A9-90FA-8E705AAE04A1" ns1:id="543FD4B2-BE73-45A9-90FA-8E705AAE04A1"><ns1:links><ns1:link ns1:href="http://gtr.ukri.org/gtr/api/persons/600EB868-D34D-4659-875A-AA46B7412DAA" ns1:rel="PM_PER"/><ns1:link ns1:href="http://gtr.ukri.org/gtr/api/organisations/473E1E67-D6EE-4447-AAB0-787C34D52313" ns1:rel="LEAD_ORG"/><ns1:link ns1:href="http://gtr.ukri.org/gtr/api/organisations/473E1E67-D6EE-4447-AAB0-787C34D52313" ns1:rel="PARTICIPANT_ORG"/><ns1:link ns1:end="2023-04-29T23:00:00Z" ns1:href="http://gtr.ukri.org/gtr/api/funds/4E6C1995-BB64-4BAF-A291-5988721FC4FD" ns1:rel="FUND" ns1:start="2022-11-01T00:00:00Z"/></ns1:links><ns2:identifiers><ns2:identifier ns2:type="RCUK">10045189</ns2:identifier></ns2:identifiers><ns2:title>Environmentally friendly new biodegradable plant-based polymer resin to coat nitrogen fertiliser for a controlled extended nutrients release.</ns2:title><ns2:status>Closed</ns2:status><ns2:grantCategory>Grant for R&amp;D</ns2:grantCategory><ns2:leadFunder>Innovate UK</ns2:leadFunder><ns2:abstractText>Agriculture applications are responsible for 3% of the energy consumed worldwide, 2% of these are used to produce inorganic fertilisers such as Urea. Due to the high solubility of these fertilisers in water, unfortunately, 70% of these fertilisers are leached fast from the soil in a few days and lost as pollution in the air and underground water leaving crops with only 20% of nutrients. Several products in the market were used to decrease the fertiliser fast leaching using a slow release chemical mechanism and by coating the fertiliser grains with water-resistant polymer and waxes. Currently, the coated fertilisers in the market were produced using a fossil-based expensive polymer which results in the expensive price of the final product (4-5 times the price of Urea), this limited the massive use of these coated fertilisers as well as concert about the effect of the use non-biodegradable polymer that was found to be toxic and accumulates in soils. In Biotica Ltd we invented a plant base polymer resin to coat fertilisers that is cost-effective and biodegradable and can extend the lifetime of fertilisers in soli for 6 months. This will decrease the final cost for farmers, decrease the pollution resulting from leaching and decrease the consumed energy for fertiliser production with less CO2 emission.</ns2:abstractText></ns2:project>