FORMATION OF INDIVIDUAL AND SEED PRODUCTIVITY OF PEAS DEPENDING ON AGROTECHNICAL METHODS OF CULTIVATION IN THE CONDITIONS OF THE WESTERN FOREST STEPPE

Abstract

Today, peas are grown on all continents, and their acreage occupies about 7 million hectares. On the globe, it ranks fifth after soybeans, beans, peanuts and chickpeas among leguminous crops. In European countries, peas are the main leguminous crop, which is grown for food and feed purposes on an area of about 3 million hectares. Recently, the acreage under peas has significantly decreased in Ukraine. The reasons for the decrease in pea production are some biological properties of the crop such as the tendency to lodging and shedding of seeds, strong (if compared with other crops) suppression by weeds, significant damage by pests and diseases, low reproduction rate, and objective factors such as lack of technological varieties and equipment for harvesting, reduction in the number of farm animals. Crop structure analysis is an important method for assessing the development of cultivated plants. The main elements of the structure of the pea crop include the number of plants preserved before harvest, the number of beans per plant, the number of seeds in the bean and the weight of 1000 seeds. The study was conducted during 2017–2019 at the "Podillia" Research Center of Podillia State University. A three-factor experiment was carried out in a ten-field crop rotation. The soil cover was represented by typical deep low-humus heavy loamy forestlike black soil. The research aimed to study the effect of different doses of mineral fertilizers and growth regulators on the formation of individual and seed productivity of peas depending on agrotechnical methods of cultivation in the Western forest steppe. It has been established that the indicators of the elements of the crop structure and the yield of pea grain depend on the varietal characteristics of the crop, soil type, agricultural technology, meteorological conditions and their interaction. The number of flowers and beans in pea plants of Hotivskyi, Chekbek and Farhus varieties fed with mineral fertilizers in doses of N15P30K45 and N30P30K45 is higher by an average of 6-8% and by 24–27%, compared to the control variant. Under the influence of growth regulators, these indicators increased by another 1.5–4.6%. The weight of 1000 seeds in the Hotivskyi pea variety was in the range of 249.5–260.6 g, in the Chekbek variety – 261.1–266.4 g and Farhus – 231.4–238.4 g.