УДК 502.6:631
Arlauskienė A.1, Nemeikšienė D.1, Šlepetienė A.2, Maikštėnienė S.1
INNOVATIVE GREEN manure TECHNOLOGies on the organic farming in Lithuania
1Joniškėlis Experimental Station, Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry
2Institute of Agriculture, Lithuanian Research Centre for Agriculture and Forestry
Introduction
The achieved high level of advance in application of intensive crop cultivation technologies does not ensure safe application of manure and pesticides. Environmental problems of water and soil pollution, soil erosion, reduction of biological diversity as well as other problems still exist all over the country. One of strategic aims of Lithuanian agricultural farming is to ensure the long-term expansion of competitive agricultural and food economies, encouragement of various economic activities in rural localities, development of bio-energetics, farming, which protects and nurtures the environment. It is important to match good economic results with sparing application of resources and level of waste – by maintaining the biologic variety, saving ecosystems. Economics to be based on the newest knowledge and innovations, linked with regular management of biological resources as well as production and use, enabling the development of safe, ecologic and competitive agricultural food, forage and etc. products.
Application of EU and national support aids, interest of consumers in safe products, encourages the development of ecologic production farms in Lithuania. The number of such farms increased in 2002-2006; hence this process is dependent upon financial support, because production of ecologic products is often economically inefficient [2]. Moreover, single-type crop cultivation farms with low variety of crops, inappropriate crop rotation, dominate in Lithuania. It is difficult to deal with problems of crops’ supply with nutrients, protection from harmful acts and other problems in such ecologic farms. The consequence is low productivity, sometimes insufficient quality of production, low efficiency of application of resources.
The base of organic farming should have multi-structural composition with legumes (Leguminosae), cattle and production, oriented towards the closed cycle of nutrient circulation [9]. Organic farming, unlike conventional farming, has complex relationships between different components of the agro-ecosystem and the quantity and quality of the final products depend on the functioning of the entire system [19]. Successful further development of ecologic agricultural farming shall depend on the fact how successful application of innovations – new products, technologies, processes – in ecologic production farms shall be. The aim of these researches is to assess the effect of application of innovative green manure technologies on the productivity of ecologic cereals, the quality of grains and effect on environment.
1. Innovative Technologies for Application of Green Manure
1.1. Technological principles of applying the green manure
Legumes are one of the most important crop rotation components in ecologic farming. They improve the nutrition of crop rotation crops by nitrogen (due to ability to fix the atmosphere N2) and other elements and contribute to improvement of the soil properties, weed choke [14]. However application of legumes (especially grass) in farm with no animal bred is limited. Therefore, the fixed nitrogen (BFN) of legumes is not evaluated in ecologic farms and it is used inefficiently. Moreover, Lithuanian soil is appropriate for cultivation of red clover (Trifolium pratense L.) and lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) that offer the higher above-ground mass yield and have high N2 fixing capacity.