Technological features of organic hop cultivation

Abstract

The use of organic hop growing technologies reduces the anthropogenic load on the hop farm ecosystem and accelerates the natural process of soil restoration. The productivity of hop cones at the same time approaches the traditional technology. Economic efficiency confirms the high profitability of hops grown using organic agricultural technologies. It is in the range of 38.7–67.3% and exceeded the profitability of hop raw materials by 1.6–2.8 times, which was obtained using traditional growing technology (24.0%). A technological process for growing organic hops on soddy-podzolic soils zone of the Polissya has been developed. To do this, it is necessary to sow green manure in the aisles of hop plantations after pruning underground rhizomes in the spring. Biological preparations for the protection of hops were used during the growing season. Five-year studies showed stable humus content, which did not depend on the agricultural technologies for growing hops. Insignificant acidification of the upper soil layer is observed on variants of traditional technology (from pH 5.9 to pH 5.4). This is due to the annual threefold introduction of ammonium nitrate. The content of easily hydrolyzed nitrogen has decreased by 32%, mobile forms of phosphorus by 13%, exchangeable potassium by 37% in the variants of traditional agricultural technology. Organic technologies have stabilized the content of nitrogen and phosphorus in the soil and there is a trend towards a decrease in exchangeable potassium.