Efficiency of liquid-phase biological preparations when cultivating carrots on peat soils

One of priority directions in cultivation of carrots is development of new techniques in technologies allowing to increase not only the yield, but also the quality of root crops. Treatment of vegetative plants with various biological products, growth regulators and hemin preparations is the most promising technological method for increasing carrots yield and quality. The purpose of the research is to study the effect of liquid-phase biological means of various natures on yield and quality of Karini variety carrots grown on peat soil. The experiment had been carried out in 2015-2016 on peat soil of the Dmitrovsky department of VNIIMZ branch FRC V.V. Dokuchaev Soil Science Institute (Moscow region). Two microbiological preparations (LPB and Azotovit) and two humic (BoHum and FlorHumat) were tested. Azotovit and FlorHumat are known registered preparations, and LPB and BoHum are the latest developments of VNIIMZ. The biological means were applied three times during growing season against the background of the main fertilizer P40K60. The largest increase in carrot yield was obtained when using LPB and BoHum - 19.4 and 18.3 %. Humic preparations contributed to a higher level of mineralization processes in soil, providing plants with available nutrients. Improvement in quality indicators of carrots for all tested biological means was noted: a higher content of carotene in root crops in the variant with BoHum - 101 mg/kg, dry matter - when using Azotovit - 9.35 %, the minimum content of nitrates when using FlorHumat preparation - 101 mg/kg. In general, the impact mechanism of the biological means used was their complex effect on plants and soil, which is of certain value for fundamental research. The method of cluster analysis showed a high degree of similarity in efficiency of bio-means LPB and BoHum in terms of set of indicators (yield, quality of carrots, agro-chemical and microbiological indicators of soil). The most promising is the humic biological mean BoHum. The considered biological means used for cultivation of carrots on peat soils will improve provision of processing industry with a raw material base, and population with high-quality vegetable products.