The influence of botanical composition of pasture agrophytocenosis on the crop yield of perennial grasses

In the Russian Federation in 2019, pastures cover 57.2 million hectares which is 28.9% of the total area of agricultural land. The great heterogeneity of both soil and climatic conditions on the territory of the Russian Federation makes it impossible to have a universal mixture of herbs for pastures throughout the country. The correct ratio of components of the multispecies pasture agrophytocenosis will help to provide animal agriculture with the required amount of feed. In this regard, the selection of agricultural crops for pasture use is an urgent task of modern feed production. The purpose of the work is to determine the influence of the botanical composition of pasture agrophytocenosis of different types on the crop yield of perennial grasses in the non- Chernozem zone. The research was conducted in 2017-2020 at the experimental field of the Northwestern Dairy and Grassland Management Research Institute, an isolated subdivision of the FSBIS VolRC RAS. The soil of the experimental field is drained, derno-podzolic and medium loamy. Cultural state is average. The experiment includes 10 variants in three-fold repetition. Inthe course of the study, the researchers found that in the stands of perennial grasses, festulolium, ryegrass, and fescue dominated more often than others, and when bean components were included, red and white clover dominated. The strongest competitors in relation to weeds are grass mixtures with two types of clover. Consisting of cereals and red clover, non-sown types of grass mixtures weakly suppress, especially in the second and third year of use. Consisting of meadow fescue, timothy and meadow-grass, the grass mixture does not have a statistically significant difference in dry matter of crop yield with other variants of the experiment which include only grasses or a combination of grasses and red clover. Significantly different from the control were the variants that include grasses in combination with two types of clover. Their crop yield is 9.03 and 8.76 t/ha, respectively, which is 25% more than the control variant.