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Rajasthan State Mines and Minerals Ltd, Udaipur, Rajasthan, India
Phosphate rock has been known for many years in some of the sedimentary basins of India. Several discoveries in the 1960s and 1970s have proved of economic importance although the country continues to remain dependent upon imports for most of its phosphate requirements. Scope for further finds of phosphate rock have probably not been exhausted and a much more co-ordinated exploration programme is recommended. Proterozoic basins continue to offer the best exploration potential and currently account for the bulk of the known domestic phosphate rock resources. Nevertheless, geologically younger basins should not be discounted in terms of their phosphate potential.
Geological ages for the main phosphorite sequences in India are not well established and there is no precise stratigraphic correlation with Proterozoic-Cambrian phosphorite provinces in other parts of the world. Since the discovery of phosphorite beds of Palaeozoic age near Dehra Dun, Uttar Pradesh, and Jaisalmer, in southeastern Rajasthan, considerable progress has been made in both the exploration for and exploitation of phosphate deposits in India. One notable, promising development in recent years has been that associated with research, in India, on the beneficiation of low-grade and highly dolomitic phosphate rock.
