EFFECTS OF DIFFERENT FERTILIZATION SYSTEMS ON BUCKWHEAT YIELD IN THE CONDITIONS OF NORTHERN STEPPE OF UKRAINE

Abstract

Soil fertility plays a significant role in plant development and has a crucial influence on yield levels. Initially fertile fields are a major advantage for farmers, but they need to be maintained properly to avoid soil depletion. Agricultural production today is focused on the direction of agricultural ecology, high quality of agricultural products, transitioning to environmentally safe technologies, and abandoning harmful and dangerous plant protection products. Rational use of fertilizers dramatically changes the ecological conditions of crop vegetation and weeds, affect ing their interaction and contributing to increased crop yield and productivity. Agrarians and scientists pay great attention to implementing a biological farming system – using by-products of agricultural production, cover crops, non-chemical plant protection methods, and bioregulators. Therefore, the main goal of our research was to justify the level of buckwheat yield when grown in classical and biologized crop rotations of short rotation in the conditions of the North ern Steppe of Ukraine. Field studies were conducted from 2014-2023 in a stationary field exper iment at Institute of Agriculture of the Steppe, NAAS. Buckwheat was grown in a short rotation grain-row crop rotation with soybean saturation up to 40%. The results of our observations indicate that weather conditions not only influenced the for mation of the yield of the studied crop but also determined the share of the impact of agronomic practices in cultivation, at least fertilization and elements of biologization. The highest buck wheat yield, on average over ten years of research, was provided by the biologized organo-min eral fertilization system at 2.01 t/ha, which contributed to a yield increase of 0.53 t/ha compared to the variant without a biologically active preparation. The separate effect of the biologized fertilization system had the greatest impact on buckwheat yield in the variant without fertilizers, with an increase of 0.20 t/ha (15.6 %), and the smallest impact was with the organo-mineral fertilization system, which accounted for 0.11 t/ha (6.0 %).