Formulation and Characterization of Plant-Nutrient Tablets

Abstract

Densifying biochar loaded with nutrients can result in enhancing the conveyance and handling of the biochar. According to a hypothesis nutrient-loaded biochar tablets have the tendency for slowly releasing the nutrients embedded, in a synchronous manner. The objectives of this research study were to formulate the plant-nutrient tablets mainly consisting of biochar and characterization of the formulated plant-nutrient tablets. Different plant-nutrient tablets namely Copper-nutrient tablet, Boron-nutrient tablet, and manganese-nutrient tablet are formulated using the biochar powder and other needed additives which are essential in the process of tablet-making. Directly compressing the powder of biochar and salts (source of the nutrients) resulted in no formation of tablets, because of the low/or no binding capability. After the addition of binder i.e., 15% starch solution and filler tragacanth gum, tablets were formulated which were hard enough and fulfilled the basic criteria of the tablet making process. The best results for the harder tablets were achieved after performing multiple batches run with different combinations of the amounts of the ingredients on the single punch tableting machine. After making nutrient tablets for copper, boron, and manganese multiple tests were run on these plant-nutrient tablets keeping in view the prospects of the current study. FT-IR spectroscopy and XRD analysis confirmed the presence of the salts which were added as the source for the required nutrients i.e., copper sulphate pentahydrate, boric acid, and manganese sulphate monohydrate. Qualitative dissolution analysis shows that plant-nutrient tablets do not disintegrates into its components too fast and takes more than three months which is an important point in the current study while the hardness test confirms that plant-nutrient tablets formulated are hard enough that they can be transported after proper packaging. Prospects of this study include a long-term field study for carrying out the pot experiment and eventually confirming its findings