Features of foliar dressing effect of winter wheat with organo-mineral fertilizer NaturAgro EcoGrow on soil properties, yield and grain quality

Abstract

When cultivating agricultural crops, especially grains, more and more attention is paid to preparations containing easily digestible organic silicon. The appearance of new organo-mineral fertilizers makes the scientific community to test their effects and identify mechanisms of action under various soil-climatic conditions. The research goal was to determine the effectiveness of foliar dressing of winter wheat with NaturAgro EcoGrow liquid organo-mineral fertilizer on the consumption of major nutrients, biological activity, yield formula, yielding capacity and grain quality. The studies were carried out in the forest-steppe zone of the Altai Region on the farm KFKh “Ivanov A.N.” when growing winter wheat of the Skipetr variety with foliar dressing with silicon-containing organic fertilizer NaturAgro EcoGrow in a rate of 2 L ha at the stages of spring tillering and flag leaf. The application of silicon-containing organic fertilizer under the conditions of extremely droughty growing season of 2023 contributed to the change of soil content of mineral forms of nitrogen, mobile phosphorus, potassium and sulfur to the harvesting period. The content levels of nitrogen, phosphorus and sulfur in the soil increased, and potassium content decreased. In the seeds, the accumulation of nitrogen and phosphorus increased, and the accumulation of potassium remained at the level of the control. The foliar dressing of winter wheat at the stage of flag leaf turned out to be the most effective; the grain yield was 8.43 t ha which was by 24.5% higher than that of the control. Twofold foliar dressing increased the yield by 10.78%. Protein content increased to 15.4% and 15.2%, respectively, as compared to 13.2% in the control, while gluten content increased from 24% to 36.0% and 30.4%. The positive effect of the NaturAgro EcoGrow dressings on the microbiological activity of chernozem was also revealed. The foliar dressing at flag leaf stage and twofold foliar dressing contributed to increase of zymogenic microflora 1.3-1.5 times with significant decrease of fungi amount - 1.8-2.2 times.