Influence of irrigation and fertilisation on yield and quality of green mass of maize in soil-climatic conditions of the Republic of Tatarstan

The present work deals with the issues of comparative evaluation of cultivation of hybrid maize Ross 140 CB on rainfed and irrigated plots with the application of calculated rates of mineral fertilisers for the planned yield of green mass 30, 40, 50 t/ha with cobs in milk-wax ripeness. The results of 3 years of research (2022-2024) established that irrigation and fertilisation enhances the effect of each other, providing 50.7 t/ha of green mass with a yield increase of 23.4 t/ha, which is 114% higher than the control variant of the experiment (without irrigation and fertilisation). Payback of one kg of mineral fertilisers was 13.8 kg of grain units, against 6-8 kg on average in the Republic of Tatarstan on spring wheat crops. The quality of green mass (in terms of crude protein content, crude fat, sum of sugars and especially the ratio of sum of sugars to digestible protein) corresponds to normative (zootechnical) indicators of cattle feeding