Abstract
Relevance. Because of difficult economic conditions, sanctions applied to Russian Federation, the issue of resource conservation is becoming more and more urgent. Finding ways to reduce costs in the tillage system is a top priority, which determines the relevance of our research. Empirical studies are aimed at studying the influence of methods of basic tillage on the yield of spring barley.Methods. Object of research: spring barley plants of the Prairie variety. Mеthods of tillage for spring barley: 1. Plowing (control) — 20 cm (POM–4/7); 2. Combined — 14 cm (AKSO-4); 3. Combined — 8 cm (AKM-4). 4. Without tillage. The total area under the experiments is 4 hectares, the area of each variant is 1 hectare, according to the main observations, the repetition is 3 times. The link of the crop rotation is sunflower — spring barley. The soils of the experimental site are ordinary chernozem.Results. The greatest compaction of the arable layer during the growing season was with the absence of tillage — from 1,26 g/cm3 to 1,29 g/cm3. During the growing season, the porosity of the arable soil layer decreased in all variants, the greatest trend was in the variant with plowing by 15%. The effectiveness of combined mulching treatments is undoubtedly positive: the reserves of productive moisture in the spring in the meter layer were higher than after plowing. In the variant without tillage, the moisture reserves before sowing were 15 mm higher compared to the control. The method of basic tillage affected the abundance of weeds in barley crops. The smallest number of weeds in the tillering phase of spring barley was against the background of plowing — 36 pcs./m2. By harvesting, the contamination of crops increased in all variants, as well as their mass by 3,1–3,5 times. A significant increase in yield was on the variants with combined processing to a depth of 8 cm and without tillage, as well as a high profitability of 110–117%.