Doctor of Agricultural Sciences, Professor, All-Russian Scientific and Research Institute of Agrochemistry named after D.N. Pryanishnikov

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Abstract. The paper states the regularities of the within-field variation of soil fertility which are important for variable rate fertilizer application under conditions of precision agrotechnologies including the technologies which limit the agroeconomic efficiency. As it is well known, the usual (traditional) fertilizer practice stipulates their application taking into account average indices of soil fertility: mobile plant food elements (N, P, K etc.) content in the plow layer. At the same time, one part of the plants gets excess of mineral nutrition, and the other part – its deficiency. That results in shortage of agricultural products, their deterioration and also the pollution of the environment and the soil with the excesses of agrochemicals in overfertilized plots. In the last decades traditional technologies give place to high-precision agrotechnologies with differentiated fertilizer application taking into account within-field heterogeneity of soil fertility. There are several constraints for widespread adoption of high-precision agrotechnologies including the underestimation of the character of within-field variability of soil quality. Our investigations reveal eight regularities of the within-field variation of agrochemical indices, which characterize soil fertility in arable soils. These regularities would allow to more seriously estimate the efficiency of variable rate fertilizer application under conditions of precision agrotechnologies.

Key words: soil, within-field contours, variability, regularities, precision agriculture.