Agro-economic substantiation of the feasibility of green manured fallow in sugar beet crop rotations of the Central Chernozem Region

Abstract

The aim of the study is to find out the feasibility of including green manured fallow in specialized sugar beet crop rotations by comparing necessary assessment indicators with their values in a traditional crop rotation with black fallow against the background of unequal fertilization levels. The study was based on the analysis of experimental data from a long-term stationary experiment, laid out simultaneously in all fields and variants on typical chernozem in triplicate. The results are as follows: within the same fertilization levels, no significant differences in the yield of winter wheat (sugar beet precursor) were revealed, and the yield of sugar beet in a crop rotation with green manured fallow was stably higher (no more than 5 to 7%), an increase in yield relative to the control fertilizer variant (6 tons of manure per hectare per year) against the background of a double rate of manure in combination with mineral fertilizers amounted to 21.7 to 23.4% for wheat and 14.3 to 15.6% for beets with an increase in the productivity of crop rotations (in natural and value terms) by 1.2 times, but an increase in costs by 1.3 times caused an absolute decrease in the level of profitability by 23 to 25%. Differences in the assessment indicators for specific fertilization variants increased over time due to an unequal degree of soil fertility reproduction, and therefore in the fifth cycle of the crop rotation with black fallow turned out to be 1.1 to 1.3 times greater than in the green manured rotation.