CURRENT TRENDS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS IN THE UDMURT REPUBLIC

Abstract

Minimisation of soil tillage is one of the defining trends in the development of agriculture. It allows for a significant reduction in agrotechnical operations in crop cultivation, thereby reducing the technological load on soils, energy, and labour inputs in production and increasing soil resistance to erosion processes. Minimum tillage effectively promotes the restoration of potential and adequate soil fertility and aligns with the principles of adaptive landscape agriculture. Despite numerous positive aspects of minimum tillage, its implementation in production is restrained by certain drawbacks: worsening of crop phytosanitary conditions, increased plough layer density, differentiation of the plough layer by agrochemical and agrophysical indicators, and more. To assess the possibility of implementing minimum tillage in the soil and climatic conditions of the Udmurt Republic, long-term field experiments have been conducted at the Udmurt Research Institute of Agriculture since 1980. Both positive and negative aspects of three types of primary soil tillage have been identified. Moldboard ploughing, throughout the observation period, compared to other types of tillage, provided the highest crop yield (by 0.15 0.50 t per hectare or 5.6 17.5%) and energy efficiency coefficient (by 1.9 16.7%). No-till soil treatment proved to be the most environmentally friendly, increasing the organic matter content in the 0-10 cm layer by 8.1 11.5%. However, it led to a strong differentiation of the plough layer into two sub-layers: 0-10 and 10-20 cm. The lower sub-layer was characterised by higher density and lower content of mineral nutrients and humus. In most cases, combined tillage showed intermediate results. Further scientific research is needed to develop agrotechnologies with more significant minimisation of soil tillage.