FORMATION OF STRUCTURAL INDICATORS OF GRAIN SORGHUM YIELD DEPENDING ON THE METHOD OF SOWING SEEDS AND PLANT DENSITY IN THE RIGHT-BANK FOREST-STEPPE OF UKRAINE

The article presents the results of studies of the influence of elements of cultivation technology on the yield of grain sorghum. Purpose. To investigate the influence of row spacing and plant density of sorghum plants of grain varieties Dnіprovsky 39 and Vіnets on the formation of indicators of the structure of crop yields in the conditions of the Right-Bank Forest-Steppe of Ukraine. Methods.Field, laboratory, comparative, analysis, generalizing, mathematical and statistical. Results. It has been proven that the best results in the formation of elements of the structure of the yield of grain sorghum were obtained when sowing seeds with a row spacing of 45 cm and a density of 150-200 thousand pieces/ha. With this sowing method, the panicle length was the largest and was equal to 28.5 – 29.9 cm in the Dniprovsky 39 variety and 28.3 – 28.2 cm in the Vinets variety, the panicle weight was 51.5 – 55.1 g in the Dniprovsky variety 39 and 54.8 – 55.4 g for the Vinets variety. The number of seeds in a panicle and their weight, depending on the increase in plant density from 150 to 250 thousand pieces/ha, decreased and the variety Dniprovsky 39 was from 1623 to 1592 pieces/panicle, and the grain weight per panicle was from 44.3 to 47.1 g. In the Vinets variety, the number of seeds decreased from 1536 to 1512 pieces/panicle, and their weight from 49.3 to 47.7 g. However, the weight of 1000 seeds was the highest at a plant density of 200 thousand pieces/ha and a row spacing of 45 cm and is equal to 31.2 g for the Dniprovsky 39 variety and 27.8 g for the Vinets variety. The grain yield in the same variant of the experiment is the highest and is 7.4 t/ha for the Dniprovskiy 39 variety and 5.1 t/ha for the Vinets variety. It should be noted that a decrease in the row spacing to 15 cm and an increase to 70 cm led to a decrease in these indicators. Conclusions. It has been established that the best formation of the elements of the yield structure of grain sorghum is observed when sowing seeds with a row spacing of 45 cm and a plant density of 200 thousand units/ha, which we recommend for growing this crop in the Right-Bank Forest-Steppe of Ukraine.