Formation of productive elements in winter wheat by seed dressing application with slow-release complex fertilisers

Abstract

Optimisation of plant nutrition in the initial stages of development is important for the formation of productive elements of the main and additional shoots and grain yield. The study presents the results of examining the effect of slow-release chlorine-free fertilisers in seed dressing application at the rate of 100 kg/ha on the formation of productive elements in winter wheat compared with the zone control – azophoska 16:16:16 and a variant without fertilisers. Field studies were conducted in 2019-2021 on winter bread wheat varieties Bohdana and Samurai. The fertilisers produced by FertinAgro were examined: DuraSOP with the content of NPK(S) – 9:20:12:(15), 10:10:17:(20), and 4:26:12:(10). It is established that the influence of weather conditions on the variability of grain weight per shoot, grain number per shoot, thousand seed weight substantially exceeded the factors under study in both varieties. The formation of productivity elements under the impact of the examined fertilisers depended on the varieties and manifested themselves in different ways in different weather conditions. DuraSOP fertilisers did not have a substantial difference in the effect on grain number and weight per shoot in the Bohdana variety compared to the control in arid conditions, but grain weight from shoot increased to 1.74-1.78 g compared to the application of azophoska, and grain number per shoot varied insubstantially under favourable conditions. Application of DuraSOP fertilisers in the Samurai variety allowed to form 1.17-1.21 g of grain per shoot under the arid conditions and 1.47-1.49 g – in the favourable conditions, which did not differ substantially from the control. The DuraSOP ActiBION increased the number of productive shoots by 8.4% and DuraSOP Phos – by 7.7% in the Bohdana variety, while only DuraSOP Phos substantially affected the productive shoots in the Samurai variety (an increase of 3.8%). Application of slow-release fertilisers allows for obtaining grain yield of 6.58 to 7.03 t/ha in the Bohdana variety and 6.61-6.80 t/ha in the Samurai variety. Fertilisers have higher efficiency in the Bohdana variety, while there was a substantial increase in the Samurai variety only when DuraSOP Phos was applied (0.31 t/ha or 4.8%). The application of slow-release fertilisers also increases the protein content in the grain by 0.3-0.5%. The sensitivity of varieties to different ratios of macronutrients in pre-sowing fertilisers is one of the elements of technology that have a high impact on wheat cultivation, so the use of effective forms can increase yields up to 11.4% compared with typical fertilisers

Keywords

• yield
• protein content
• standing density
• variety
• thousand seed weight