ORGANIC CULTIVATION TECHNOLOGY OF ECOLOGICALLY PURE POTATOES OF EARLY VARIETIES
One of the technologies of obtaining clean ecological products is organic farming. To obtain environmentally friendly early production of potatoes, the authors analyzed the practical use of such techniques as covering potato plantings in the initial growth period, decapitation, germination of tubers before planting and the combined use of covering and germination, which provide for fuller utilization of the crop growing capacity. Agronomic grounds for the use of technological methods were provided in 2015-2019 for the Udacha variety. The experiments were repeated 3 times. The cropping pattern used was 70x35 cm. Harvesting was carried out in 2 periods: July 15 and July 30. Statistical processing of the results was carried out by B.A. Dospekhov's method of variance analysis. The content of heavy metals and chemical composition was determined by standard methods. It was found that when using the aforementioned technological methods, the yield increases by 10.2...23.2% as compared with the control variant, depending on the dates of harvesting. The minimum increase in yield (10.2%) was observed in the variant with the germination of tubers before planting, the maximum increase (16.1%) in the variant with a combined use of germination and covering. When harvesting tubers in the second period (July 30), the trend remained, but the increase was higher and ranged from 15.3 to 23.3%. As to the chemical composition of the five variants of experimental samples of potato tubers, no differences were found. The study proved the expediency of using the technological methods to obtain early potato yield without changing the chemical composition and ensure the content of various heavy metals within acceptable standards.