The effect of agricultural background and drained landscape on productivity and economic efficiency of spring wheat grain production

The current study was conducted in 2021–2024 to identify the effect of the agricultural background and conditions of the drained agricultural landscape on productivity and economic efficiency of grain production of the spring wheat variety ‘Zlata’ within the Upper Volga region in a stationary field trial located on a terminal moraine hill in the Tver region. The trial scheme comprises the agro-microlandscapes (factor A) such as transit-accumulative southern slope, transit southern slope, eluvial-transit southern slope, eluvial-accumulative (hilltop), eluvial-transit northern slope, transit northern slope, transit-accumulative northern slope and the fertilizer background (factor B), where 1) control (N30) and 2) N60P60K60. There has been found that the application of full NPK at a dose of 60 kg/ha in active ingredient under the spring wheat variety ‘Zlata’ contributed to obtaining the maximum increase in grain productivity with 0.62 t/ha in the upper parts of the agrolandscape (in the eluvial-accumulative and eluvial-transit southern slope) in comparison with the control (N30). The variability of wheat productivity in the variant with full NPK was 22.7 %, and in the control it increased to 28.2 %. The spring wheat productivity obtained in the control variant has shown a direct strong correlation with the content of humus (r = 0.80) and easily hydrolyzed nitrogen (r = 0.75) in soil. The costs of producing 1 ha of spring wheat and the cost of the obtained products were maximum on the agricultural background with the use of N60P60K60 in the transit-accumulative microlandscape of the northern slope and amounted to 38.27 and 77.10 thousand rubles/ha, respectively. The lowest cost price of 1 ton of spring wheat grain (11.2 thousand rubles) was in the control variant of the transit-accumulative microlandscape of the northern slope. The maximum conditional profit in the trial (46.41 thousand rubles/ha) and profitability (167.6 %) were obtained in the control variant of the transit-accumulative agro-microlandscape.