The effect of biological products and microelement fertilizer ‘Organomix’ on maize productivity in the southern part of the Rostov region

The current paper has presented the study results on the effect of biological products and microelement fertilizers ‘Organomix’ on productivity of the maize hybrid ‘Zernogradsky 354MV’ carried out in laboratory for cultivation technologies of row crops (FSBSI “ARC “Donskoy”) in 2019–2020. The soil in the experimental plot was favorable for the cultivation of corn, containing 3.36% of humus in the arable layer, 24.4 mg of mobile phosphorus, and 360 mg of exchangeable potassium per 1 kg of soil. The soil pH was 7.0. The study was carried out to estimate the effect of the use of biological products for seed treatment and microelement fertilizers ‘Organomix’ for plant treatment on productivity and economic efficiency of maize cultivation. There was low moisture content of sowings during the period of the trial. There was established an uneven distribution of precipitation, the value of the hydrothermal coefficient was less than 1 (0.64 in 2019 and 0.65 in 2020), which indicated the dryness of the vegetation period. The studied biological products and microelement fertilizers influenced the yield structure elements. The applied biological products and microelement fertilizers ‘Organomix’ improved survival rate of plants before harvesting (the plant density was 4.39–4.54 pcs/m2). There was increase of grain productivity indicators, namely cob weight ranged from 112.9 to 125.7 g, grain weight per ear varied from 94.4 to 104.8 g and 1000-grain weight was 221.2–231.4 g. The improvement of the yield structure elements increased grain productivity on 0.25–0.77 t/ha. Economic efficiency showed that the use of biological products and microelement fertilizers raised the conditional net income to the level of 28 061–34 821 rubles/ha, profitability up to 167.6–201.8% and reduced production costs to 4640–5231 rubles/t.