Management of soil organic matter regime in biologization of agriculture

All related research was conducted from 2010 to 2022 in the Belgorod region, located in the south-west of the Central Chernozem region (CCR). The goal of this study was to analyze the effects of introducing agriculturally biologized elements into arable soils on the organic matter content of those same soils. It was determined, that compared to their virgin counterparts, unwashed arable chernozems, typical and leached, had lost about 39.8–42.0% of their organic matter due to long-term agricultural use. In comparison to 2010–2014, the level of organic fertilizer input had doubled to 9,6 t/ha in 2019–2022, while the area of green manure cultures had increased by a factor of 2.56 to 317 thousand ha/year. Concurrently to the aforementioned years, the by-product output increased by 18.8–37.6% (depending on the crop), reaching levels between 2.07–10.3 t/ha, due to an increase in agricultural yield. The area of ley farms decreased by a factor of 2.73 down to 47.1 thousand ha/year. Additionally, a wide percentage of the Belgorod region have implemented low tillage technology usage, including no-till and executed complex anti-erosion activities. As a result of that, in 2019–2022, the average content of organic matter in the arable layer of soils went up by 0.3% (to 5.3%), while reserve by 9 t/ha (to 159 t/ha). Each hectare of the cultivated areas on average accumulated 19 carboxylic units, thereby making it worth about 19 thousand rubles. The percentage of soils, which contain 6.1–8.0% of organic matter, rose to 20.0%, while those containing 2.1–4.0%, were reduced to 10.9%.