AgroTerra Research and Innovation Center Conducted over 400 Experiments per Year
AgroTerra Research and Innovation Center has summed up the results of its activity in 2020. The Center's specialists have conducted more than 400 field experiments in seven regions of Central Russia. The AgroTerra experts have adjusted the process instructions for production employees, based on the results of the experiments.
Oleg Stoliarov, director of AgroTerra Research and Innovation Center, says, “the Center's research helps to create new and upgrade the existing elements of production technologies for own cultivated crops”. The Center has gained solid experience in soybeans and spring wheat, which account for a significant share in our structure of sown areas. After the experiments, the company selects the best varieties and hybrids, fertilization systems, plant protection schemes, and other optimal agrotechnological parameters”.
In 2020, the number of studies increased by 5% compared to last year. So did the number of experimental plots - up to 1,300 (compared to 1,200 in 2019). The Center’s researchers have studied 145 varieties and hybrids, including all crops cultivated by AgroTerra. The most productive of them are cultivated now in the company’s production fields. Thus, the successfully tested soybean varieties are two early ripening (“Lider 1", "Favor"), three mid-ripening ("Altona", "Amadea", "Arleta”), and two late ripening ("Sultana", "RZhT Shuna") varieties. Oleg Stoliarov notes, “We have included them in the list of varieties used by the company in the regions where they have shown the greatest efficiency - the maximum increase in yield in the group and a high protein content”.
In 2021, the Center will continue to study the new soybean and spring wheat varieties, and look for the most productive hybrids of high oleic sunflower and rapeseed. “We plan to investigate intensive corn hybrids with potential yields of 9-10 t/ha or more. In terms of plant protection systems, we will continue to select available and highly effective means and drug products with new active ingredients. They should become a substitute for drugs to which some pests and diseases are already resistant”, Oleg Stoliarov summarizes.
Due to the choice of the best varieties and optimization of the soybean production technology, AgroTerra obtained last year a crop with a higher - more than 35% - protein content. The introduction of new sugar beet hybrids that were tested in 2019 provided the company with a root crop with a sugar content of more than 20%.