Influence of growth stimulants on spring wheat yield and grain quality
Introduction . Spring wheat is one of the main food crops in the Russian Federation. The main areas of soft wheat cultivation are the South of Western and Eastern Siberia, the Altai territory, the South Urals, the Lower Volga region and the Non-Chernozem region. In recent years, due to economic instability in the country's agriculture, the use of fertilizers and plant protection products has been reduced to a minimum when growing crops, as well as the culture of agriculture has decreased. In this regard, farmers need to improve agricultural technologies. Purpose : to study the effect of growth stimulants Albit, Zircon and Epin on the yield and quality of spring wheat grain. Material and methods . Field experiments were conducted in 2017 and 2019 at the experimental field of the Mari State University. The soil of the experimental site was sod-slightly podzolic medium loam. The technology of cultivation of spring wheat of Lada variety was generally accepted for the zone. Research results and discussions . The treatment of spring wheat crops with growth stimulants provided an increase in grain yield and improved its quality. More effective was the use of Zircon, which allowed to get a significantly high grain yield - 2.67 t/ha. In the variants with the use of Epin and Albit, the yield was lower by 4.2 and 4.9 %, and amounted to 2.56 and 2.54 t/ha, respectively. In comparison with the control variant, treatment of spring wheat crops with Epin also provided a significant increase in grain yield - 160 kg/ha. The low fertility of sod-podzolic soils of the Republic of Mari El limits the formation of protein and gluten in wheat grain, reduces its quality. However, as our research has shown, the use of growth stimulants improves the quality of wheat grain, increases its suitability for baking purposes: grain protein content increased by 0.35-0.69 %, gluten content - by 0.8-1.7 % and grain hardness - by 8.1-10.8 %. When cultivating spring wheat using Zircon and Albit, the quality of gluten was of the first group. Conclusion . The use of growth stimulants in modern agricultural technologies of spring wheat can become one of the ways to stabilize and increase productivity, improve product quality. On average, over the years of research, the use of the growth stimulant Zircon was more effective, which allowed to obtain a reliably high grain yield - 2.67 t/ha, with a protein content of 11.63 %, gluten - 28.7 % of the first group of quality and with a grain hardness of 56.3 %.