Efficiency of measures and technology to preserve soil fertility and protect the soil from erosion in the steppe regions of the Southern Urals

FSBSI “Federal Scientific Center of Biological Systems and Agrotechnologies of the Russian Academy of Sciences”, Gagarin ave, 27/1, 460051, Orenburg, Russia

^* Corresponding author: skorohodov.vitali1975@mail.ru

Abstract

The main source of soil fertility decline in the arid conditions of the Orenburg region is erosion, which manifests itself to varying degrees over the entire arable land. In the Orenburg region, 2214.9 ha are subject to water erosion, wind erosion - 279.4 ha, and out of a total area of 6240.0 thousand hectares, deflationary hazardous erosion - 5304.3 thousand hectares. In connection with erosion processes, the humus content in the soil decreases by 1-6 tons in southern chernozems, ordinary -1.7%. The studies were carried out in two stationary areas of the Orenburg Cis-Urals and Trans-Urals in order to determine the efficiency of measures and technologies to preserve soil fertility and protect the soil from erosion in arid conditions. With the transition to contour-landscape agriculture (CLA), the fertility of slope lands and the yield of field crops increases, and the negative effect of drought decreases to a minimum. The decrease in soil fertility caused by the erosion process is recorded in the fallow field when it is allocated for spring wheat. Soil-protecting and green fallows largely eliminate this disadvantage. During the fallowing period as per the data, the field of black fallow accumulates 430 kg per 1 ha of nitrates in the 0-150 cm layer, and when mineral fertilizers are applied at a dose of N40P80, it increases to 689 kg per 1 ha.