Experience in Cultivating Sod-Podzolic Arable Soils at the Educational and Experimental Soil and Ecological Center of Lomonosov Moscow State University “Chashnikovo”

The article summarizes and presents the results of long-term studies on the effect of mineral and organic fertilizers and liming on crop productivity depending on the degree of cultivation of sod-podzolic soil. It is shown that fertilizers act as a strong factor that can increase the yield of agricultural crops and improve their quality and that the yield of field crops is directly correlated with the degree of cultivation and fertility of the soil. It is also shown that the complete or partial replacement of urea with urea-formaldehyde fertilizer (UFF) in the composition of triple (NPK) mineral fertilizer in sod-podzolic soil of varying degrees of cultivation does not solve the problem of increasing the efficiency of nitrogen fertilizers. The study of the productivity of grain crops (winter wheat, winter rye, spring wheat, oats, and barley) has revealed that, regardless of the form of nitrogen fertilizers, the optimal dose of NPK for all the above crops did not exceed 100–150 kg ha–1 of the active substance of each element. This dose has made it possible to implement the 60–80% potential of the studied varieties of grain crops. The efficiency of nitrogen doses above 100 kg ha–1 leads to a deterioration of the enzymatic activity of soils when using both urea and its combinations with UFF. The level of cultivation of sod-podzolic soil remains decisive in the formation of agricultural crop yields and during the intensive use of fertilizers.