Influence of fertilizers and of the autumn tillage method on potato yield and phytopathologiс characteristics of tubers

The field experiment on identifying differences in the effect of the herbicide and foliar feeding of plants with liquid nitrogen fertilizer (UAN-32) against the background of autumn tillage with a cultivator or plow on potato yield and phytopathologic characteristics of tubers during storage was carried out in 2019-2020 in the Nizhny Novgorod region. The experiment was laid on sod-podzolic sandy loamy soil in production conditions on two varieties of potato ‒ the super-early Сolomba variety and the medium-early Innovator variety grown for seeds. The variants under study were surface application of the soil herbicide Gezagard in a tank mixture with UAN-32 and foliar feeding of plants with UAN-32 (N 42 ) during the growing season against the background of N 42 P 42 K 169 (calcium chloride in autumn + ammonium nitrate phosphate in spring). The results indicate that the background fertilization provides the yield of Colombа variety potato of 20.7-29.0 t/ha, the Innovator variety – 17.4-23.1 t/ha. The use of the herbicide is more effective during autumn tillage with a cultivator, providing an increase in yield of 28-37 % on both potato varieties, feeding of plants with UAN-32 contributes to an increase in yield (8-10 %) only on the Сolomba variety. Plowing the soil for potatoes helps to avoid the pest damage of tubers and to reduce their susceptibility to rhizoctonia by 6-27 %, to wet rot ‒ up to 55 %. In general, it has been established that due to autumn plowing with fertilization at a dose of N 42 P 42 K 169 , it is possible to obtain an increase in potato yield exceeding the increase provided both by herbicides and the use of foliar feeding of potatoes.