Influence of treatments on the productivity of grain crops in the conditions of the Lower Volga region

Elena Seminchenko

Abstract: The research was carried out in the fields of the Lower Volga Research Institute of Agricultural Sciences. Work was carried out in 2017-2020. The soil of the experimental site is light chestnut, heavy loam, with a humus content in the arable layer of 1.74 %. The average annual precipitation was 339.7 mm. The technology of cultivation of these crops was generally accepted for the research area. The placement of options (A) is sequential and options (B) are arranged in blocks in three tiers. The following types of basic soil treatments were studied in the experiment: moldboard, moldless, surface, as well as a system of crop rotations, which includes: grain-steam (4x-full sowing with the SZ – 3.6 seeder)-control and grain-steam (4x-field similar to the control with the rejection of the main treatments for spring crops, sowing with the Omichka SZS-2.1 seeder). Records and observations were carried out according to the recommendations. The largest reserves of productive moisture in the meter layer of the soil in winter wheat for the spring vegetation period were on the moldless and moldboard variants when sowing with the SZS-2.1 seeder and amounted to 73.2 and 69.5 mm. By the time of sowing of spring wheat with a higher content of productive moisture reserves, stubble variants showed, where moisture reserves varied from 101.2 mm on a surface background to 133.8 mm on a variant with a moldboard-free background. In the variants with sowing with the SZS-2.1 seeder, winter wheat had a denser stalk and amounted to 356 units/m2 for moldboard processing, 388 units/m2 for non-moldboard processing and 334 units/m2 for surface processing, which ultimately had a positive effect on the yield of winter wheat. In spring wheat and spring barley, the difference in the results of the stalks was small for the variants, it differed in the number of productive stalks in favor of the main treatments for crops and averaged 297 pcs/m2 for spring wheat at SZ-3.6 versus 245 pcs/m2 at SZS-2.1, for barley 332 pcs/m2 and 268 pcs/m2, respectively. On average, over four years, the level of profitability in a 4-field crop rotation without processing for spring crops had a profitability higher by 28.8-31.5% depending on the background and amounted to 72.7% for moldboard, 96.4% for moldless and 54.1% - surface treatment.

Keywords: economic efficiency; grain crops; grain productivity; productive moisture; tillage

Date published: 2021-10-28