The crop wants more potash than nitrogen — Pakistan gives it one part in eighty-three. Vital Potash is built for the moment the crop actually needs potassium, its mid-life peak, and carries boron in two forms so the potassium can get in.
Fully soluble — it will not clog drip emitters or spray nozzles — so the dose can be placed at the stage the crop draws hardest, through fertigation or foliar, instead of only at land preparation.
Nitrogen 11% · K₂O 44%, boron-coated. Solid crystalline powder, light blue. pH 6–7 · solubility 330 g/L. Registered under PS 933-2026, PSQCA licence CM/L-4124/2025, packed in 20 kg — standard and licence per the regulatory register, pack per the specification sheet.
The two are taken up together and work together — potassium governs how efficiently the plant uses nitrogen, so supplying both in one product at the mid-life window supports both, and means one application rather than two at the busiest point of the season.
| Crop | Stage — the uptake window | Dose per acre | Method |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sugarcane | Canopy development & grand growth | 10 kg + 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Maize | Flowering | 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Rice | Booting | 15–20 kg | Fertigation |
| Wheat | Booting | 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Cotton | Flowering | 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Potato | Tuber initiation & formation | 10 kg + 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Sunflower & oilseeds | Before and at flowering | 10 kg + 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Banana | Flowering & fruit formation | 20 kg × 3 | Fertigation |
| Orchards | Fruit formation | 20 kg | Fertigation |
| Fruiting vegetables | Germination, flowering & fruit formation | 10 kg × 3 | Fertigation |
| Onion & garlic | Flowering & bulb formation | 10 kg + 10 kg | Fertigation |
| Leafy vegetables | Vegetative growth | 10 kg | Fertigation |
Doses per acre, from VAN agronomy. Every stage sits inside the crop’s potassium uptake window rather than at land preparation — which is the point of the product. Growing something not listed? The full stage-by-stage programme for 28 crops is in the crop nutrition plans.
Boron is directly involved in membrane integrity, cell-wall structure and the sugar transport potassium governs. In early 2012 VAN identified that role and built a coated potash system around it — both boron forms on the granule, so the boron arrives in the same place, at the same time, as the potassium whose uptake it supports. One application instead of two, and no missed boron pass.
Highly soluble and immediately plant-available — meets the demand that exists the moment the product dissolves. Its weakness is its strength: highly soluble means leachable, and it may be gone before the crop’s later requirement.
Covers early-season boron demand.Intermediate-to-slow release. It stays in place and keeps supplying boron through the later season, when the fast form has leached away — but on its own it may not release quickly enough for early demand.
Covers late-season boron demand.The behaviour of the two forms is established soil chemistry, not specific to any manufacturer. What is VAN’s is the 2012 decision to build a potash product around it, and the coating system that carries both forms on one granule. That is a mechanism, not a trial result: VAN publishes no yield figure for it.
Two numbers side by side — this is the whole argument for potash in Pakistan.
kilograms of potassium for every kilogram of nitrogen — measured in the field, not modelled.
one kilogram of potash for every eighty-three kilograms of nitrogen, nationally.
Source · Uptake: Rama Lakshmi, S., Sreelatha, T. & Sireesha, A. (2019), An Asian Journal of Soil Science 14(1&2):67–72. National application: FAOSTAT, Fertilizers by Nutrient, via Our World in Data (2023). Both ratios derived from the figures charted below.
Nitrogen makes a plant grow. Potassium decides whether that growth turns into anything. It runs the plant’s water economy, so it governs drought and heat tolerance; it moves sugar from leaf to stalk or grain, so it governs filling and sweetness; it stiffens cell walls, so it governs lodging. A crop given nitrogen without potassium grows tall, soft and thirsty — and then falls over, or fails to fill.
Forty-three years in which the gap never closed. Nitrogen grew 4.5× and potash 4.7× — but from almost nothing to almost nothing: 0.89% of all nutrient applied in 1980, 0.94% in 2023. Its forty-three-year high was 2.6% (1987), its low 0.35% (1996), and it fell 61% in the single year 2021–22 — potash is imported and priced in dollars, so it is the first thing dropped and the last bought back. Source · FAOSTAT via Our World in Data, full annual series; chart shows 1980 onward.
Potash as a share of all nutrient applied (N + P₂O₅ + K₂O), derived from the same FAOSTAT series.
Flagged, not smoothed: FAOSTAT reports 2017 and 2018 identically for all three nutrients in Pakistan — an imputation in the source, visible as a flat step. It is left as published, because smoothing someone else’s data without saying so is how figures stop being checkable.
Being precise about what these are: the charts are application data, measured and published annually. The soil findings below are published research conclusions about the consequence. No measured national time series of Pakistani soil potassium exists from 1980 to today — if one does, VAN would like to see it.
Despite mica-rich parent material — through continuous weathering, intensive cropping and nutrient mining without replenishment. The soil had capital to spend, and it has been spending it.
Wakeel, A. & Magen, H. (2017). International Journal of Agriculture & Biology 19(3).A regional nutrient budget covering 1970–2018 found a cumulative deficit of 247 million tonnes of potassium — an order of magnitude larger than the nitrogen or phosphorus deficits over the same period.
Pathak, H., Fagodiya, R. K. & Singh, A. (2024). Scientific Reports 14:29136.Sugarcane takes up more potassium than nitrogen — 265 against 220 kg/ha, and 4.2× its phosphorus. Highest uptake recorded across six genotypes, RARS Anakapalle field experiment, 2013-14. Source · Rama Lakshmi et al. (2019), DOI 10.15740/has/ajss/14.1and2/67-72.
By flowering, maize potassium uptake is essentially finished — 66–122% of the season total across four independent studies, against 46–50% for phosphorus. It can exceed 100% because uptake peaks before flowering and then falls: later, potassium is leaving the plant, not arriving. Source · as compiled in Singh, Sawatzky & Thomas et al. (2023), Agronomy 13(7):1913.
A long season, an enormous biomass, and sugar that must move from leaf to stalk. Every one of those is a potassium job.
Bulking and fruit-filling crops move large quantities of sugar and water in a short, unforgiving window.
Lodging in wheat and poor filling in maize are frequently potassium problems mistaken for nitrogen ones.
This is why Vital Potash is a mid-life product. Potash at land preparation is not wasted — a crop needs potassium in the ground from the start. The argument is about return: if the budget runs to one potash application, it should land where the crop takes up and converts the most — canopy development and grand growth in sugarcane, booting in wheat, flowering in maize and cotton. Potassium applied after that window has closed arrives too late to be converted at all. A fully soluble product exists so the dose can be placed at that point.
Across six site-years and eight varieties, soybean accumulated 91–100% of its season-long potassium by R5.5, against 68–77% of its phosphorus. Half of that potassium then leaves in the stover rather than the seed — a potassium harvest index of 49%, against 81% for phosphorus. Source · Gaspar, Laboski & Naeve (2017), Crop Science 57(4):2193–2204.
Published field measurements, not VAN’s estimates: the sugarcane uptake figures, the maize and soybean uptake timing, and the 40% soil-deficiency finding — each cited with author, year and journal.
Established chemistry: the behaviour of sodium borate and calcium borate. Textbook, not a VAN claim.
VAN’s own: the 2012 development work, the decision to build a potash product around boron, and the coating system that carries both forms on the granule.
Where the trial stands: Vital Potash’s own replicated field trial is still to come. Vital Urea has a published maize trial and a five-site programme behind it; this page carries Vital Potash’s own evidence and nothing borrowed. Ask us where it stands and you will get the current position.
Vital Potash is available for private label and for licensing, with formulation detail released under NDA through the partner dossier.
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