Scientific bases of principles estimating a state of the vegetation cover in steppe agrocenoses using innovative methods of smart agriculture

The study’s main target is to actualize notions about spatial heterogeneity of steppe agrocenoses in conditions of the current climatic and anthropogenic changes, scientific grounds of instrumental methods estimating a state of the vegetation cover, and to identify optimal phytometric parameters of high productive agrocenoces of crops. Industrial winter wheat plantings and demonstrative seeds of spring wheat, sunflower, barley, maize, soya, winter rye, and winter wheat on the chernozem in Orenburgskaya oblast were objects of the study. High technological agrocenoses of spring wheat on chernozem in Samarskaya oblast and winter wheat on dark-chestnut soils in Saratovskaya and Volgogradskaya oblasts were used in the research. Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) of crops was measured by a portable device-Green Seeker Handheld Crop Sensor, Model HCS – 100. The assimilating area of plants was estimated by the gravimetric method. Generally accepted practices of the statistical analysis were used in the processing of digital material. As a result of the study, spatial differences in the vegetation cover state of field agrocenoses were detailed by its instrumental examination. It was ascertained that the vegetation cover’s heterogeneity began to show at the start of vegetation and did not level itself. In the following stages, we could see that proved reasonability to examine plantings instrumentally starting from the early stages when the technical correction was possible. Detection of optimal phytometic parameters of agrocenoses of different types of crops in regions of the steppe zone in the European part of Russia by NDVI evaluation on stages of plant development in zonal climatic and soil conditions under high levels of agro technologies was offered to estimate a state of the current plantings and to make technological solutions correcting the course of vegetation.