Winter wheat crop production and its quality when using complex fertilizers

Abstract

The purpose of the current study was to estimate the effect of mineral and complex fertilizers with macro- and microelements, methods, and methods of their application upon productivity and individual quality elements of crop products when cultivating winter wheat in the conditions of the North-West of the Russian Federation. The study was carried out on the experimental plots of the FSBSI FRC LK OP Pskov Research Institute of Agriculture in 2020–2021. The objects of the study were the winter wheat variety ‘Skipetr’, mineral and complex fertilizers. The main application of mineral fertilizers (N40P50K70) provided favorable conditions for plant nutrition from the beginning of a vegetation period. The use of complex fertilizers for crops helped eliminate the deficiency in nutrients in the following phases of development. The trials have established a positive effect of mineral and liquid complex fertilizers on winter wheat productivity improvement (from 0,32 to 0,96 t/ha according to the trial variants); on the nitrogen content in grain (by 9–13 %) with a stable level of phosphorus and potassium; on crude protein yield per unit area (from 1.5 to 44.8 kg/ha) with the yields of main and by-products; on the formation of more filled grain (by 0.5–2.6 g) with an increase in the mass fraction of raw gluten. The use of complex fertilizers ‘Kodafol’ and ‘Strada N’ during the vegetation period made it possible to obtain the greatest increase in a number of indicators. An estimation of the agronomic efficiency of the studied agricultural practices has shown that the greatest return on 1 kg of NPK in terms of productivity increase was achieved in the trial variants treated with ‘Kodafol’ (against the background of mineral nutrition N40P50K70) and ‘Strada N’ (against the background of N40P50K70+N20) with 4.7–6.7 and 4.8–6.8 kg of grain, respectively.