2022 * XXXIII * 2

Highlights: 

• Deficit irrigation positively affects water use efficiency.
• High-yielding genotypes are more sensitive to deficit irrigation strategies.
• All tomato genotypes showed different behaviour in response to water stress.
• The genotypes strategy led to reduced water use in tomatoes.

Highlights: 

• Water stress mainly by reducing the sink size and partitioning efficiency of dry matter to grain (harvest index) has reduced grain yield in fenugreek and has less correlation with biological yield and dry matter production efficiency.
• It seems that planting the fenugreek medicinal plant in the agricultural system at a density higher than the natural habitat can be a kind of imposition of density on the plant, which is aggravated in the conditions of drought stress and it is necessary to pay more attention to this issue in research.
• Increasing plant density, first by reducing source strength due to shading, and then by further increasing plant density through sink size restriction, leads to reduced individual seed yield.
  Although in some crops, the increase in density under water stress conditions can compensate for the decrease in yield, in fenugreek, the increase in density under water stress conditions was not beneficial for the plant.
• Under optimal irrigation conditions and mild stress, there was no difference in chlorophyll fluorescence between different densities, while at severe water stress, high density had a significantly lower chlorophyll fluorescence than low density.

Highlights: 

• The efficiency of growing leguminous and cereal agrophytocenoses (Trifolium pratense and Medicago sativa sown with the addition of Bromus inermis, Lolium multiflorum, Festuca rubra), highlighted their economic and energy advantages over cereal grasses.
• The best indices of economic and energy efficiency are provided by growing alfalfa-cereal grasslands.
• Among fertilizer variants, the highest indices of economic efficiency are provided with the application of Р60K60 in combination with the use of drugs of appropriate strains of symbiotic nitrogen fixation with net profit and profitability of 360–477 € ha^–1 and 85–107% with a cost of 1 ton of fodder units 80–93 €.

Highlights: 

• Observations of the process of ontogenesis in a group of woody plants and forest grass in the phytocenoses of the Ukrainian Polesie of Sumy region with their division into boreal and nemoral species were done.
• Found that in the last two decades, nemoral plant species begin vegetation earlier and pass the first phases of the ontogenetic cycle faster than boreal species.
• Changes in plant ontogenesis, in turn, lead to changes in the population characteristics of plant species: the number of individuals in the population, the size and configuration of the population field and the ontogenetic and vital spectra of populations changed.
• Forest ecosystems are characterized by two processes: change in the floral composition of plant species that form the grass-subshrub layer and change in the composition of forest-forming tree species.
• As a result of these processes, against the background of the loss of competitive advantages, a trend of general nemoralization of forest phytocenoses of Polesie with changes in their floral composition is formed in the group of boreal species.

Highlights: 

• Based on the aims of the "Soil Deal for Europe" the ways for achieving a good soil cover status in Estonia are discussed.
• A critical analysis of region-based present-time management of soil organic matter was done.
• Resulting of the pedo-ecological conditions of Estonia, the pros and cons of the European Union's plans for carbon farming were analysed.
• By the principles of the pedocentric approach, the soil humus status and carbon farming technologies are soil type specifics and should be utilized in the most detailed soil taxonomic unit.
• Relatively good databases on soil humus status for all most dominated soil species by different land use conditions are available in Estonia.

Highlights: 

• Geothermal ventilation provided more comfortable temperatures during warm seasons.
• Geothermal ventilation maintained higher temperatures in the piglet and sow dens during cold seasons.
• Valve-type ventilation provided more intensive air exchange and, as a result, minimized the content of harmful gases.
• Valve-type ventilation created more comfortable air humidity in spring and summer, and geothermal ventilation in winter and autumn.

Highlights: 

• Petroleum hydrocarbons are classi­fied as major environmental pollutants due to their stability and durability in the environment.
• Deter­mination of the phytotoxic effect is a relevant method to study petroleum-polluted soil.
• Petroleum pollution has an ambiguous impact on Pisum sativum and Avéna satíva. Soil toxicity grows over time of petroleum pollution.
• Determinate the high efficiency of biological remediation by probiotics as innovative and environmen­tally-friendly method.
• The phytotoxic effect of Pisum sativum and Avéna sativa decrease by the indexes of seed emergence, roots length, roots weight, the ground part length and ground part weight due to the use of probiotics.
• Probiotic concentration 1:10 is the most effective of all studied initial concent­rations of pollutants.

Highlights: 

• The oxidative and microbial stability of chicken patties were evaluated after their treatment with some plant peel extracts during frozen storage.
• The following determinations were conducted in the samples: peroxide value, thiobarbituric acid reactive substances, free fatty acids, pH, total aerobic bacteria, and psychrophilic bacteria.
• Alcoholic extracts of pomegranate, potato, and apple peels led to a significant decrease in peroxide value.
• A higher reduction of TBARS values was found with pomegranate extracts.
• POTPEP-treated chicken patties had the highest FFA values.
• Bacterial counts were within the allowed ranges.