PRODUCTIVITY OF LAVANDIN AND ECONOMIC EFFICIENCY OF ITS CULTIVATION USING DIFFERENT ELEMENTS OF TECHNOLOGY
Authors: Dudchenko V. V. , Stetsenko I. I. 
Published: September 2023

Cultivation of medicinal and essential oil crops is currently one of the promising directions for the development of small and medium-sized agribusiness not only in Ukraine, but also in EU countries. More than a third of manufactured medicinal products use plant products as raw materials, which is why the demand for them both on the domestic and global markets is constantly growing, which in turn makes this business more attractive compared to traditional agricultural production. Cultures embodying almost all aspects of the use of essential oil and medicinal plants are representatives of the genus Lavandula L. – L. angustifolia, L. latifolia, L. hybrida Rev., as evidenced by the dynamics of the world market of lavender essential oil, which every year at different sources has a steady positive movement (5.4-6.3%), which currently amounts to about 109.4 million dollars with the prospect of reaching 200 million dollars by 2030.

For the conditions of southern Ukraine, a promising plant from the genus Lavandula L. is lavandin – an interspecies hybrid obtained as a result of artificial crossing of narrow-leaved lavender and broad-leaved lavender. However, there are no detailed recommendations regarding the agricultural techniques of its cultivation in production plantations. The available information in scientific and popular science sources is also general and incomplete and mainly concerns lavender. The purpose of the research was to determine the influence of irrigation methods and fertilization systems on the productivity of flower raw materials of lavandin productivity, ’the Iniy’ lavandin variety in particular, and to determine the economic efficiency of their cultivation in the conditions of southern Ukraine. The research was being carried out in 2021-2023 on dark-chestnut weakly on saline medium-sugling soils of a private enterprise “Krynytsia”, located in the village Ingulets, Kherson Raion, Kherson Oblast. The scheme of the experiment included three methods of irrigation (factor A) – surface droplet, subsoil droplet, sprinkler and control without irrigation, and three fertilization systems (factor B) – mineral – I, mineral – II, organic.

Analysis of the effectiveness of different irrigation methods shows that during the experiment the sprinkler irrigation method was the most effective in terms of flower mass formation with an average yield of 9.66 t/ha, ranging from 9.35 to 9.83 t/ha depending on the fertilization systems. The yield of essential oil depends more significantly on plant fertilization systems. This indicator was the highest for the use of an organic fertilization system, in which the yield of essential oil was on average 139.7 l/ha, varying from 128.0 to 147.4 l/ha depending on irrigation methods. The maximum profit from 1 hectare was obtained for the organic fertilization system in the version without irrigation – 158.0 thousand UAH and for the sprinkler method of irrigation – 160.4 thousand UAH with a profitability ratio 218.6; 166.1%, respectively.