USE OF PEAT FROM THE WEST SIBERIAN LOWLAND IN AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTION

V. S. BOIKO

In the system of measures for increasing crop yields, fertilizers and their proper use play a considerable role.

The production of mineral fertilizers in the country is increasing every year, and farms are receiving more and more of them; but even under these conditions, by 1970 Western Siberia will receive approximately 80–100 kg/ha of arable land in standard fertilizers. This will be significantly less than the average for the RSFSR, especially in comparison with the areas of the non-chernozem zone of the European part of the USSR, areas of irrigated agriculture, and areas where industrial crops are cultivated.

The task of increasing the efficiency of fertilizer use will remain just as urgent as it is at present.

Attention to organic fertilizers and to their proper use will not decrease, but will grow. Academician D. N. Pryanishnikov pointed out that organic fertilizers are valuable not only because they contain the nutrients needed by plants, but also because they create conditions for a more effective use of mineral fertilizers by plants.

Collective farms and state farms of Western Siberia, with their existing livestock numbers, have the capacity to accumulate manure in an amount averaging 2.5–3 tons per hectare of arable land per year. Increasing the accumulation of manure is connected not only with growth in the number of farm animals, but also with increasing the amount of bedding material in livestock buildings. The use of moss peat for bedding is possible on those farms where it is located close to cattle yards, where it can be extracted, dried, and loaded into the stalls in good time. It is considerably more difficult to solve the problem of increasing bedding material for livestock farming in the steppe regions. For these regions, bedding peat must be prepared at peat enterprises in the form of compacted slabs or large briquettes and transported to the areas where it is to be used.

Along with the use of peat for fertilizing fields by passing it through cattle yards, it can and should be widely used directly for fertilizing fields. The effectiveness of preparing and applying peat-manure and peat-mineral composts has been studied quite well in the European part of the USSR and in a number of farms in Western Siberia, including in Tomsk Oblast. However, this is possible only in those places where peat is located near the farm and where timely delivery to the composting sites is possible.

For districts and farms where there is no peat, and its delivery over long distances is practically impossible because of the high cost of transport (while large quantities of a material of low transportability have to be hauled), it becomes absolutely necessary to develop peat-based fertilizers that would be highly transportable, would, when applied in small doses, give an economically profitable increase in yield, and could be applied with the seeders and other fertilizer-application machines available on farms.

To present more fully the complexity and importance of solving this problem, we give, according to available literature sources, the areas of arable land in the main zones of Western Siberia within the boundaries of Altai Krai and Kemerovo, Kurgan, Novosibirsk, Omsk, and Tomsk oblasts (Table 1).

Table 1

Distribution of arable land by the main zones of Western Siberia

During the period of development of virgin and fallow lands, considerable areas of meadows, pastures, and small woodland were transformed into arable land. According to the Central Statistical Administration of the RSFSR, in these administrative oblasts and the krai, out of a total area of all agricultural lands in the use of agricultural enterprises and farms of 36 million ha, the sown areas amounted to 21.2 million ha of arable land, which exceeded the area in 1953 by 7.9 million ha.

The difference in soil fertility by zones is very substantial. Within each zone there are also soils that differ in fertility.

Soils with a small reserve of organic matter, low-percentage in humus content, need above all large doses of organic fertilizers. This applies both to podzolic and to light-chestnut soils. Soils with a high percentage of humus and a normal reaction of the soil solution possess high potential fertility, but often the yields of agricultural crops on such soils increase substantially with the application of small doses of mineral, organic, and bacterial fertilizers. These fertilizer doses allow plants to make better use of the potential fertility of the soils. This applies above all to the various subtypes and varieties of chernozem soils.

In the steppe and forest-steppe zones, the soil cover is represented by ordinary, southern, leached, and podzolized chernozems. The potential fertility of these soils is high, but yields are not always high. Even large doses of mineral fertilizers do not in all cases give the expected increases in yields.

The application of biologically active fertilizers can noticeably increase the yield of cultivated plants. At the same time, it is important that the fertilizers applied create biologically active foci in the soil. In this respect, a fertilizer composition that would make it possible to make better use of soil fertility is important. One type of such fertilizer is peat–mineral granules. These are complex granulated fertilizers.

Peat–mineral granules, especially those containing ammonia water, as our studies have shown, contribute to better development of the root system of plants; the vegetative mass of plants develops better; physiological activity increases, etc. All this contributes to better utilization by the root system of plants of the nutrients and moisture present in the soil. If the potential fertility of the soil is low, then, as our experiments have shown, small doses of organic and mineral fertilizers, including peat–mineral granules, will not have a substantial effect on the size of the yield of the fertilized crop.

During the period from 1961 to 1965 we conducted laboratory studies and field experiments with the application of peat–mineral granules of various compositions under field and other crops on soils differing in fertility. On light-chestnut and podzolic soils the effectiveness of peat–mineral granules was insignificant or entirely absent. On gray forest soils, leached and podzolized chernozems of Novosibirsk and Tomsk oblasts, the effectiveness of these fertilizers is clearly observed (Table 2).

Table 2

Effect of complex peat–mineral granulated fertilizers on the yield of agricultural crops (average for 1961–65)

Note: In 5 centners of peat–mineral granules, the content of mineral fertilizers was about 20%, i.e., 95–100 kg/ha was applied.

Greater increases in the grain yield of spring wheat and in the silage mass of corn were obtained when applying 5 centners/ha of peat–mineral granules containing about 100 kg of mineral fertilizers than when applying 5 centners/ha of mineral fertilizers. In potato yield, the yield increases for both types and doses of fertilizers were the same.

The use of mineral fertilizers in the form of peat–mineral granules makes it possible to increase significantly the efficiency of their application. The effectiveness of peat–mineral granulated fertilizers incre—

increases if ammonia water is included in their composition, and also when they are bacterized.

At the same time, the microbiological activity of the granules is preserved for 6–8 months, and the soil of fertilized fields significantly increases its biogenicity. This makes it possible to intensify the mobilization of nutrients for the cultivated plants.

It is necessary, on a semi-industrial installation, to prepare, according to the appropriate formulation and technology, such a quantity of peat-mineral granules as to permit experiments with agricultural crops on production plots.

Research work on the development of an industrial technology for preparing peat-mineral granules is being carried out by the Problem Laboratory for the Comprehensive Use of Peat in the National Economy at Tomsk Polytechnic Institute (headed by Associate Professor S. I. Smol’yaninov). As testing of the technological properties of peat-mineral granules has shown, they not only possess high resistance to crushing and abrasion, but after moistening and subsequent drying they retain their physical properties; the fertilizers do not cake.

The granulation technology being developed is highly promising also in that peat-mineral mixtures can be prepared with different ratios of mineral fertilizers and with the inclusion of microelements, taking into account the properties of the soils and of the plants to be fertilized.

In Western Siberia, podzolic soils in Tomsk and Novosibirsk oblasts and the light chestnut soils of the Kulunda steppe are low in humus. For these soils, high doses of organic fertilizers are needed. Under the influence of high doses of fertilizers, not only the agrochemical but also the agrophysical properties of these soils change for the better. The task is to determine the most effective per-hectare doses of peat fertilizers and the methods of transporting them from the north to the south of Western Siberia.

We did not conduct special field experiments to identify different doses of peat for fertilizing podzolic and light chestnut soils. But a reconnaissance experiment in vegetation vessels with different doses of peat under spring wheat on the dark chestnut soils of Northern Kulunda (the “Oktyabrsky” state farm, Karasuk District), conducted by us in 1965, makes it possible to trace certain tendencies in the change of the chemical and physical properties of these soils.

Soil with additions of air-dry peat at rates of 20, 40, 60, and 100 t/ha was placed in the vegetation vessels. As a control variant, vessels with soil without peat were used. To determine the influence of cellulose-decomposing and phosphobacteria on accelerating the mineralization of peat and the accumulation of humus and nutrients for plants, variants with bacterization of 20 and 100 t/ha of peat and bacterial fertilizers without peat were included. The experiment was conducted in fourfold replication.

Moisture in the vessels was maintained by watering within 60% of full moisture capacity. The experiment was accompanied by agrochemical and microbiological analyses of the soil, as well as by observations of the condition of the plants.

The experiment showed that increasing the doses of peat by the end of the growing season produced some increase in the content of humus, total nitrogen, and \(\mathrm{P_2O_5}\).

Some physical properties also changed for the better: the moisture capacity of the soil increased, the bulk density decreased, and soil porosity increased. The percentage of structural and water-stable aggregates increased.

Bacterization of the minimum and maximum doses of peat reduced the content of humus and total nitrogen; contradictory data were obtained for the other indicators.

The application of early doses of peat increased the microbiological activity of soils for all recorded groups of bacteria.

The yield of the total mass and grain of spring wheat increased with an increase in the peat dose.

Whereas in the southern and steppe regions of Western Siberia it is possible to grow many grain, industrial, fodder, and vegetable crops, in the northern regions of the West Siberian Lowland the possibilities for growing some of these crops are limited not only by climatic conditions but also by soil conditions. Here there is a zone of non-chernozem soils with a low percentage of humus.

Expansion of sown areas is possible through weakly peated soils and drained peatlands.

An experiment carried out in 1965 at the “Tomskii” state farm on a medium-loamy dark-gray soil, using mineral fertilizers, peat-mineral mixtures, and peat-mineral and peat-bacterial granules for maize, showed their high effectiveness (Table 3).

Table 3

Effectiveness of applying fertilizers for maize on dark-gray soil
(1965 experiment)

Small doses of mineral fertilizers in the composition of peat-mineral granules gave a smaller yield increase than the application of peat-bacterial granules, especially with the inclusion of phosphobacterin.

A relatively high dose of mineral fertilizers gave a significant yield increase; mixing it with peat further increased the yield of green mass of maize. But the peat-mineral mixture, having ensured vigorous development of the vegetative mass, reduced the percentage content of dry matter, as a result of which the increase in the yield of dry mass proved to be low.

Small doses of fertilizers in peat–mineral granules will not affect yields subsequently; they must be applied every year for each crop. Relatively high doses of mineral fertilizers, both in pure form and in peat–mineral mixtures, can have a positive effect on the yield of subsequent crops. However, the aftereffect of these and other fertilizers must be traced under comparable conditions.

Thus, conducting research on the use of peats from the West Siberian Lowland in agricultural production permits the following conclusions:

1. When using peat to fertilize fields by preparing peat-based fertilizers, it is necessary to take into account the potential fertility of the soils being fertilized and the economic advisability of applying large doses of fertilizers. On soils of high potential fertility, the use of small doses of complex peat–mineral granular fertilizers containing up to 20% mineral fertilizers increases the yield of fertilized crops and significantly increases the effectiveness of mineral fertilizers.

2. The application of high doses of peat on the dark chestnut soils of the Kulunda, according to reconnaissance experiments, improves the agrochemical and agrophysical properties of this soil.

3. On dark-gray and medium-loamy soils, the application of peat–mineral mixtures, peat–mineral and peat–bacterial granulated fertilizers increases the yield of corn by 20 to 42% in comparison with the unfertilized control. Broadcast application of $N_{30}P_{60}K_{30}$ gives a yield increase of 37.2%.

4. It is necessary to continue studying the ways and methods for effectively involving the peat of Western Siberia in agricultural production.