Productivity of Short-Rotary Crop Cultivation under Different Systems of Basic Tillage in Organic Agriculture of the Steppe of Ukraine

Abstract

Long-term reform of the agricultural sector in Ukraine is taking place under difficult economic and natural conditions. In modern agriculture, the most relevant ones are biologized measures and technologies for growing crops and resource- and energy-economic restoration of soil fertility. Studies of the impact of the system of basic tillage and the use of straw bio-decomposers and postharvest residues in organic farming were conducted in the most common and typical for the southern region of the steppe of Ukraine shortrotation crop cultivation with the following alternation of crops: peas – winter wheat – winter barley – ½ sunflower fields + ½ corn fields. During the years of the first cultivation, the experiment showed the advantages of a system of differentiated tillage, where even without the use of bio-decomposers, the highest yield of cereals was obtained – 3.64 tons/ha and sunflower – 2.20 tons/ha (check experiment). The application of the planar-free system combined with multi-depth and especially planar-free shallow soil processing, main tillage caused a decrease in grain yields by 0.11-0.39 tons/ha and sunflower by 0.28-0.42 tons/ha, respectively. With the use of bio-decomposers provided by brands Ecostern and Cellulad, yields’ growth is in the range of 0.13-0.25 t/ha or 4.5-8.7% for cereals and 0.10-0.23 t/ha or 5.4-12.4% for sunflower. The application of the Ecostern bio-decomposer 1.5 l/ha provided an increase in the yield from 1 ha of crop rotation area of grain, fodder, fodder-protein units and digestible protein on average in all systems of basic tillage by 4.7, respectively; 4.5; 4.3 and 5.4%, and with the introduction of Cellulad 2.0 l/ha, these figures increased by 9.5, respectively; 8.9; 8.6 and 10.8% compared to options without the introduction of bio-decomposers.