Scientific Journal of KubSAU

The organization of animal feeding in the summer and procurement of fodder for the winter are of great importance. The sowings of sugar sorghum can become a reliable and stable source of fodder even in the regions with insufficient humidity. It is a unique drought tolerant crop, which can be used as green mass, hay, silage, grain, mono fodder, briquettes. The article gives the study results of green mass and absolutely dry substance, and the assessment of cultivation efficiency of such sugar sorghum varieties and hybrids grown in FSBSI ‘I.G. Kalinenko ARRIGC’ as ‘Zernogradsky yantar’, ‘Debyut’, ‘Listvenit’, ‘Zersil F1’, ‘Elisey F1’. The productivity of green mass and dry substance of the new variety ‘Listvenit’ and the hybrid ‘Elisey’ exceeded the standard variety on 7,0-5,0 t/ha and 2,30-0,74 t/ha respectively. The cultivation technologies of sweet sorghum varieties and hybrids produced the high net energy of 69,6-121,9 GJ/ha with the coefficient of energy efficiency of 3,72- 5,08. As for the energy, the cultivation technology of the sweet sorghum hybrid ‘Elisey’ can be considered as the most efficient variant, as it produced the maximum net energy of 121,9 GJ/ha with the coefficient of energy efficiency of 5,08

The study was carried out during 2010-2015 years in the All-Russian research Institute of Grain Crops named after I.G. Kalinenko (the laboratory of the cultivation technology of plowing crops), situated in the southern soil-climatic zone of the Rostov region, which is characterized with the unstable and insufficient humidity. The trials were conducted on the heavy loamy, calcareous chernozem obyknovenny (natural blacksoil). The object of the study was the grain sorghum variety ‘Zernogradskoe 53’, approved to use in the Rostov region. The agroclimatic conditions during the years significantly differed during the vegetation in the amount of precipitations (from 110.2 mm in 2010 to 200.2 mm in 2013) and in the temperature regime (from 2512.9 0С in 2010 to 2788.8 ºÐ¡ in 2015), that allowed evaluating the grain sorghum productivity more objectively. The article gives the study results of the effect of the weather conditions on the duration of vegetation, productivity and grain quality (content of protein, oil, ash and fiber). The article showed the estimated interconnection among the sum of active temperatures, precipitations and hydrothermal coefficient during the sorghum vegetation with the principal economic-valuable traits of grain sorghum. The sum of active temperatures showed the greatest effect on the duration of the vegetation (r=0.89); the sum of precipitations during the vegetation had the greatest effect on the productivity (r=0.80). There was determined the strongest positive correlation of the sum of active temperatures with the content of protein in the grain sorghum kernels (r=0.80) and the average negative correlation with the content of oil (r=-0.69). The sums of active temperatures and precipitations, when the grain sorghum gives the largest productivity, were established