Creation of long-term cultivated pastures in the history of the Northwestern dairy framing and grassland management research institute

The article presents the long-term research work on the creation, improvement and use of cultivated pastures, conducted by the Northwestern Dairy Farming and Grassland Management Research Institute in the conditions of the Russian North. The scientific activity has been focused on solving the most important and urgent problems of public agriculture, animal breeding, and culture of their formation and management since the first years of the development of the experimental station, later - the institute. The soil and climatic resources of the Northern Region, the presence of flood meadows and pastures have contributed to the creation of cultivated pastures as a source of cheap and complete feed. There has been developed a system to create, improve and use long cultivated pastures (up to 50 years on the farm of “Dityat'evo”, 25-30 years on the experimental production farm of “Kurkino”), producing 45-50% of green fodder with non-stop content, milking cows on pasture in summer. Given the importance of improving grasslands through low-cost energy saving technologies, the institute worked both to minimize the processing of sod using combined aggregates, and to study the types, varieties and seeding rates of legumes for pasture use. Research in the period from 2000 to 2010 is the basis for developing a rational system of grassland management in the conditions of the Russian North. The authors have created the patterns for the pasture feed formation of the required quality by grazing cycles with the help of systematic study of the influence of accumulated effective temperatures, the lack of air humidity, precipitation, doses and timing of application of mineral fertilizers. The researchers have studied the influence of species and varieties of legumes to the productivity of pasture grass stands and soil fertility,and have created environmentally sound technologies of the cultivated pastures improvement that ensure the content of legumes in the grass stand (39-54%), collection of dry basis of 5.0 to 5.2 tone of 1 hectare, the content of digestible protein in 1 fodder unit 132-137g. Currently, the scientists are conducting research on the influence of species and varieties of perennial grasses on the formation of pasture agrophytocenoses to develop a resource saving technology for their creation. Different time periods set new research tasks that the scientists of the institute have successfully solved.