Problems of irrigated agriculture in the Volga region and their solution
Authors: Pronko Nina Anatolievna 
Published: December 2022

The article shows the problems of irrigated agriculture in the Volga region at different stages of its formation, starting from the emergence of widespread irrigation in the region in 1966 and up to the present; the reasons for their occurrence identified by the author, together with his like-minded people and students, and the scientific solutions developed by them. It was established why the initial socio-economic function of land reclamation "Creation of a zone of guaranteed grain production in the Volga region" was not implemented. It has been proven that the solution to this problem could be the cultivation of dwarf non-lodging wheat varieties and the use of growth inhibitors, in particular chlorocholine chloride. To achieve high productivity of an irrigated hectare, given that irrigation changes the conditions for the growth of agricultural crops, the regional characteristics of their consumption of moisture and nutrients were studied, on the basis of which new agricultural technologies were developed and introduced. The most important problems of irrigated agriculture in the region are actively developing degradation processes: groundwater rise, secondary salinization, dehumification, soil compaction and destruction of soil structure. The objective and subjective causes of these processes, the patterns of their development in the irrigated agrolandscapes of the Volga region have been established, effective methods have been developed to prevent development and reduce the severity of degradation. Thus, it has been proven that the reduction of infiltration nutrition from the fields and the normalization of the reclamation situation on them can be achieved by using the developed differentiated irrigation regimes for crops; prevention of soil dehumification and an increase in humus content is possible only on the basis of an organo-mineral fertilizer system using the calculated doses of fertilizers determined by the proposed complex calculation method according to the predicted rotational balance of nutrients. It has been established that green manure is an effective method for preventing dehumification, reducing density and restoring soil structure. The primary reason for the development of undesirable soil-reclamation processes in the irrigated agrolandscapes of the Volga region and their low productivity is the nature of irrigated agriculture systems that is not adaptive to natural conditions. To solve this problem, a toolkit has been created for adapting regional farming systems to the environmental conditions of a particular field, which is a set of modern information technologies, including local integrated GIS monitoring and three information-advising systems for managing the water regime, potential, effective fertility and the physical component of the fertility of irrigated crops. soils. Irrigated agriculture has been and remains a very costly industry. This hinders its development, especially during economic crises. To increase the yield of vegetable crops under these conditions, low-cost technologies have been developed: irrigation regimes and systems of mineral fertilizers with drip irrigation and technologies for the use of chelated fertilizers, including types, doses, timing and methods of application. An important problem is the involvement of areas abandoned due to salinization in agriculture. To solve it, for the first time, based on the study of soil-reclamation processes occurring in waste lands, it was established under what conditions their self-reclamation is possible and a method was developed for determining the degree of salinity based on the results of geobotanical monitoring.