Cultivation of miscanthus under conditions of the northeastern Forest-Steppe of Ukraine

The problem of using alternative energy sources from renewable feedstock is becoming more and more of great current interest for modern society due to energy crisis and ecological situation which is getting worse. Among many high-yielding plants, perennial cereal miscanthus is an appreciable one for producing biofuel in the form of fuel granules. Cultivating phytoenergetic cultures it is important to apply fertilizers as an important component of the technology, which is aimed at raising yielding capacity of vegetative mass. Unlike other cereals, culm of miscanthus is partially or fully filled with white soft pith. Joints at the bottom of the culm are quite short, and on the top part of the culm they can be of a large length due to the division of intercalary meristem. Thus, during the growing season the largest amount of joints on the culm was in the variant N60 – 7.1 pieces which is more comparing with the control on 1.3 pieces and with N30 - on 0.9 pieces. At the end of the growing season the amount of joints raised slightly. Thus, in the control variant the amount of joints was 6.4 pieces, N30 – 7.3 pieces and N60 – 8.0 which is more comparing with the growing season on 0.6 – 0.9 pieces on the culm. As the result of the estimated indices we defined the greatest amount of leaves in the growing season by the variant N60 – 9.5 pieces per culm, and the least amount was on the control 7.8 pieces per culm, in the variant N30 – 8.7 pieces per culm. The same tendency was at the end of the growing season. Thus, the largest amount of leaves on the culm was in the variant N60 – 10.5 pieces, on the control – 8.5 pieces, N30 – 9.8. The difference in leaves amount on the culm between growing seasons varied from 0.7 to 1.0 pieces. At the end of vegetation the weight of plants was 48.5–77.0 g. The least weight of plants was on the control – 48.5 g which is more on 20.5 g than in the variant N30, and on 28.5 g of the variant N60. So the maximal weight was 77.0 gr in the variant N60. The weight of dry plant on the control was 25.1 g, N30 – 32.5 g, N60 – 37.1 g. The maximal weight of dry plant was in the variant N60 – 37.1 g, that is more on 4.6 g in the variant N30 and 12 g on the control. Pre-harvest density of miskanthus plants by apllying different dozes of fertilizers varied. Thus, the greatest density was in the variant N60 – 42 pieces per m2. The less density was got in the variant N30 – 38 pieces per m2 and the least density was on the control – 37.0 pieces per m2. According to the analysis of yield capacity indices of miscanthus during the years of research and different variants we pointed out that the maximal yielding capacity as for fertilizer dozes was in the variant N60 – 15.58 tons per ha, that is more on 20.7 % than in the variant N30 (12.35 tons per ha) and on 40.4 % that in the control variant (9.29 tons per ha).