THE PROBLEM OF SUGAR BEET CYST NEMATODES IN MODERN CONDITIONS OF MACROECONOMIC AND CLIMATIC CHALLENGES

Abstract

In this work, the current state of infection of the cultivated areas of sugar beet farms with the sugar beet cyst nematode Heterodera schachtii is considered. After the systemic crisis of agricultural production in the early 90th, the practice of operating Russian sugar factories not using domestic (sugar beet) but imported (cane) raw materials was widespread. For many years, in the absence of a host plant in the fields, the population density of highly specialized phytohelminths naturally decreased to an economically imperceptible level. However, in accordance with the principle of irreversibility of soil biocontamination of agroecosystems, the nematode retained its presence due to the mechanisms of mesobiosis and the maintenance of the population on reserve weeds. After the strategic course taken in 2014 towards import substitution, sugar beet areas (usually around sugar factories) returned to the main crop, and in 2018, for the first time in its history, Russia even became a sugar exporting country. However, the technological regulations of the USSR, mostly crop rotations were not observed and the nematode problem was again actualized, first of all, in the Chernozem and Krasnodar region. The proposed model of the dynamics of the population density of the nematodes, depending on the cultivated crop, makes it possible to assess the ecological and economic consequences of disturbed crop rotation, taking into account the conjuncture of the world food market. Climate change is another important challenge to be considered in the assessment of the nematode problem. Along with the noted increase in the bioclimatic potential of a number of agricultural lands in the Russian Federation, the development of the parasite during the growing season can occur not in three generations with a reduced fourth, but with a full cycle for the fourth generation.