Improving the use of green manure crops in potato production in western Siberia

Abstract

The paper presents the results of three years of studying the effects of green manure fallow on the yield and the quality of potato varieties of various ripeness groups (2016 through 2018) on leached heavy-loamy black soils of the forest-steppe of the Ob region (West Siberia, Russia). The efficiency of cultivated crops (vetch-and-oats mixture, creeping trefoil, medick, white melilot, spring rape, brown mustard, oil radish), as well as the use of manure and pure fallow, has been shown. It has been shown that the highest yields of green manure crop for potatoes were obtained in the variant with the use of oil radish (50 t/ha), white melilot (40 t/ha), and medick (36 t/ha). In cultivating potatoes on green manure fallow, the leaf area with the photosynthetic capacity of 2,400 m2d/ha is formed. The highest yield of the early-ripening variety Lyubava is 32.8 t/ha on the background of medick, and of the mid-ripening variety Sapho after oil radish – 32.6 t/ha. Green manure crops allow forming the high quality of the products: marketability of tubers – 93 %, dry matter content – 24.9 %, and starch – 17.4 %, with the concentration of nitrates in the tubers by 5.5 – 7 times lower than the maximum permissible concentrations for potatoes.