INFLUENCE OF ABIOTIC ENVIRONMENTAL FACTORS, MINERAL FERTILIZERS AND FORECROPS ON YIELD OF MILLET GRAIN IN THE STEPPE ZONE OF THE SOUTHERN URALS

Abstract

The article presents a study of millet in the system of dry farming, depending on abiotic factors of the environment of the steppe zone of the Southern Urals. The paper compiles long-term data (2002-2021) on air temperature, precipitation, dry wind days and millet grain yield in Orenburg region. Studies of millet were carried out on the experimental field plot founded in 1990 on southern black soils of Orenburg region. The aim of the study is to determine the best impact of unregulated weather factors (precipitation, temperature, dry winds) on millet yield in crop rotations and in monocrops after application of mineral fertilizers. The research was carried out according to generally accepted method of field experiment. The object of the experiment is millet. The scheme of the experiment consists of six variants of millet sowing in four repetitions. Based on the interesting points of the study, the maximum rainfall for July is 42.2 mm and for June is 33.3 mm. Elevated temperature is observed in July 22.8 °C and the largest number of dry windy days in August is 18. The average temperature for the period (May-August) is 20.5 °C, precipitation is 125.6; 116.3 mm, dry winds - 64.0 days. There is mainly a negative reaction of millet to mineral fertilizers in the study, leading to a yield decrease ranging from 0.80 to 0.52 t/ha. The fifth variant in a two-field crop rotation has the highest yield on the agricultural background with fertilizers of 1.21 t/ha. As a result of statistical analysis of the data, it is revealed that the best impact on millet yield at two levels of agricultural background is exerted by precipitation that fell in July, except the fifth variant. The share of the influence of July precipitation was notedly determined in the second variant of the field experiment and was 70.81; 66.05% at a significance level of 0.000003; 0.000013. It is necessary to cultivate millet after hard wheat in a two-field crop rotation, since usage of fertilizers provides an increase by 0.35 tons of grain.