MOISTURE SUPPLY AND WEED INFESTATION OF SPRING BARLEY CROPS (HORDEUM VULGARE L.) DEPENDING ON THE BASIC TILLAGE SYSTEM

Abstract

Spring barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) is one of the most common crops in the world of agriculture. Field research was conducted at the Poltava State Agricultural Experimental Station. M. I. Vavilov during 2021–2022. The research results show that the smallest number of weeds in crop crops (32.8 pcs./m2) was counted during tillage using Mini-till technology. When tillage, according to classical technology, there was an increase in the number of weeds by 2.4 pcs/m2 compared to the Mini-till system. The maximum abundance of weeds was observed on the No-till variant, which is 5.1 pcs/m2 more compared to Mini-till tillage. A similar level of weed infestation of crops was observed with shallow tillage (37.4 pcs./ m2). A decrease in the number of weeds was achieved on average during the growing season of spring barley by 7.1%, compared to No-till technology when tillage according to the classical scheme, which provided for plowing to a depth of 20-22 cm. Studies have revealed that the most negligible mass of raw weed plants in an air-dry state was formed with shallow primary tillage. Compared to other experiment variants, their mass was less, by 4.7–20.7 and 4.6–20.3 %, respectively. Studies have found that regardless of the technology of primary tillage, annual monocotyledonous and dicotyledonous species prevailed in the structure of biological groups of weeds. As for perennial weeds, there was an increase in their share by 2.9–3.8 times compared to other variants of the experiment, only with shallow tillage. It was found that the largest reserves of available moisture in a meter layer of soil both at the time of sowing and harvesting spring barley were formed on the variants of non-flange tillage, which were more extensive, respectively, by 5.7–13.3 and 4.1–4.7 mm, compared to the variant of the classic primary tillage.