Institute of Agroengineering and Environmental Problems of Agricultural Production

The medicinal plant Centella asiatica L. (gotu kola) is widely known for its benefits and high economic potential with demand for simplicia reaching 126 tons/year, so efficient and environmentally friendly cultivation innovations are needed. Optimal production of this plant requires the availability of balanced nutrients and a growing medium that supports growth. This study aims to analyze the effect of the frequency of application of liquid organic fertilizer (LOF) of goat urine along with a combination of growing media on the growth and productivity of gotu kola. The study was conducted at the Green House of the Plant Laboratory of Jember State Polytechnic. The design used was a two-factor factorial RAL, namely (1) a combination of growing media (soil: rice husk charcoal: cow manure) with a ratio of 1:1:1, 1:2:1, and 1:1:2, and (2) the interval of goat urine LOF application with treatments every 4, 7, and 14 days. Each treatment was repeated three times. Based on the analysis of variance, the two treatment factors separately did not show a significant effect on all growth parameters or yield of pegagan plants, but the interaction of the two significantly affected the number of leaves in the 8th week with the best treatment P0I1 (1:1:1, interval of 4 days) producing an average of 6.92 leaves. The conclusion of this study is that the use of a combination of 1:1:1 media with a LOF interval of 4 days can increase leaf growth, although in general there is no significant difference in other parameters. The implications of this study indicate the need for an assessment of the appropriate LOF concentration to maximize the growth and production of sustainable pegagan.

In greenhouse gas emissions a significant part is accounted for by livestock production. The largest amount comes from ruminants including the manure collection and storage facilities. As existing farms are modernized and new farms are built, the proportion of loose housing systems in them is increasing. They are characterized by a shift from solid manure to liquid manure production. The study is aimed at estimating the greenhouse gas emissions from different modern manure collection and storage systems on cattle farms. The estimation was based on data from one of the agricultural enterprises of the Northwestern Federal District following the Guidelines of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and the developed national methodology for the inventory of greenhouse gas emissions. The study considered three most common manure handling technologies. The results showed that the transition to liquid manure production systems contributed to an increase in greenhouse gas emissions due to higher methane production. At the agricultural enterprise studied, methane emissions increased from 1894.17 kg/year to 36137.02 kg/year. The application of manure separation into solid and liquid fractions followed by their individual treatment, reduced methane emissions to 6269.70 kg/year. Nitrous oxide is released during the solid manure processing. It can be reduced by controlled aeration.

The study aimed to look into how dairy cattle rearing in Russia and the USSR got technical and technological support in the first half of the twentieth century. At the start of the 20th century, two-thirds of Russian agriculture were small peasant farms. They used manual labor and did not need the costly machines. The consolidation of farms was very slow. Yet it laid the foundation for a shift to mechanized livestock production. The First World War, which began in 1914, followed by the Revolution and the Civil War halted for years the technical development of Russia's agricultural production. In late 20s, the Soviet Union already faced the challenge of producing more agricultural goods. This increase could be possible by starting highly mechanized agricultural enterprises. By 1931, “Soyuzselstroy”, an All-Union Agricultural Construction Association, had prepared standard designs of dairy cattle farms for 100 and 200 heads. They provided for mechanization of main processes of cow housing and care. In 1930-1940, scientists and engineers of the All-Union Institute of Mechanization (VIM) and its branches undertook the creation of cattle farming machinery. This period saw the development and manufacture of a number of machines that made livestock farmers labor easier. The work on setting standards for designing the cow barns started. By 1939, VIM had designed a system of machines and test edit in collective farms. The need for specialized organizations to help collective farms to install and put into operation the livestock equipment became evident. At the same time, training of agricultural engineers started in Leningrad, Moscow and other USSR cities. A Decree by the Council of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union dated July 8, 1939, set a delivery plan of machines and units for livestock farming in 1940. Thus, by 1941 the conditions were created for integrated mechanization of main labor-intensive processes in national animal husbandry. Those days agricultural ecology was not in the focus. With no widespread production of mineral fertilizers in place, application of all manure to soil posed no environmental risk.

Crop Rotation Experiment was established on experimental facilities of the Institute for Engineering and Environmental Problems in Agricultural Production – branch of Agro-Engineering Centre VIM, Saint-Petersburg. The objective of the study was to consider the requirements for growing organic potatoes. In an experiment with potatoes (Solánum tuberosum) variety Udacha, the influence of 3 factors was studied: the effect of organic fertilizers; action of bio-fungicide; row spacing depth. The compost studied was produced in the Institute from chicken manure using an aerobic fermentation unit. Doses of composts corresponded to 0; 80; 110, 160 kg N/ha. Potato tubers were treated with a bio-fungicide using a sprayer installed on a potato planter, and the leaves were treated during the growing season. Organic technology for cultivating potatoes was developed at the institute and used in experiment. The experiment has been equipped with automated tools for collecting information. Weather conditions differed from each other during the experiment. In 2021, conditions were dry during the potato development period. Weather conditions in 2020 and 2022 were similar. Monitoring shows that deep cultivation of row spacing contributed to better absorption of precipitation. This created more convenient conditions for potato development. Compost helped to increase the content of mineral forms of nitrogen in the soil. Due to high soil fertility, the yield of standard potato tubers in the variant without compost and bio-fungicide reached the level of 20.3 – 20.5 t ha-1 in 2020 and 2022 and 13.4 tha-1 in 2021, a dry year. Compost provided a significant increase in potato yield from 4 to 9 tha-1, depending on the dose of compost and year. The array of experimental data was generated for 2017-2022. After mathematical processing, the dependence of potato yield on the hydro-temperature coefficient in May and the dose of compost used was obtained.

Relevance. In modern pig-breeding complexes, manure is processed by separation producing the liquid and solid manure fractions. The complexes also generate other types of organic waste. Testing the process of producing the organic fertilizer based on the solid organic waste of a pig-breeding complex in a drum-type biofermenter.Material and methods. The processing of a mixture of two types of solid fractions of pig slurry and the waste from mechanical cleaning of grain into an organic fertilizer in a drum-type biofermentation unit was tested. The tested material was produced on the pig-breeding complex with the closed production cycle located in Leningrad Region. The optimization criterion was the temperature of the mixture in the installation. The controlling factors were the aeration frequency, the air supply rate to the biofermenter, and the rotation interval of the drum. Assumed values of the tested factors were: the moisture content of the mixture of 55–65% and the density of the mixture of 400– 600 kg/m3. The standard methods for statistical and experimental data analysis were applied.Results. Four operation modes of the biofermenter were tested, of which only one allowed to achieve the heating of the mixture above 55 °C and a stable course of the biofermentation process. Under this mode, the aeration rate was 5 min/h; the air supply rate to the biofermenter was 10 m/s; and the drum rotation interval was every 12 hours. The significance of the factors in a multivariate experiment was considered; the mathematical model was analyzed using the steepest ascent method. Considering the identified operation mode, 12 drum-type biofermenters with the working volume of 31.3 m3 each will be needed to process the solid fraction of manure produced on the pig-breeding complex with the animal stock of 107,000 head and the output of the solid fraction of manure of 90 tons per day. A building with a floor area of 1000 m2 will be required to place these biofermenters. This area is 113.4 times smaller than the area of the watertight pad for clamps to process the manure by the passive composting technology. Nitrogen emissions will be reduced by 6.3% owing to the intense mineralization of nitrogen in the fermented mixture.

The article presents the results of an inventory of man-made load sources in the drainage basins of Kuibyshevskoe reservoir’s four inflowing rivers − Kazanka, Myosha, Sviyaga, Bolshoy Cheremshan, which differ in the physiogeographic conditions for runoff formation and the intensity of land use in the catchments. The quality and quantities of channelized runoff are monitored by regional departments of the Russian Federal Hydrometeorology and Environmental Monitoring Service. The inventory of external load sources included collection and systematization of information on economic activities within the drainage area of Kuibyshevskoe storage reservoir (888 enterprises). Analysis of the collected material showed that the input of nutrients from the catchment with mineral and organic fertilizers was quite low in the studied basins. The load from point sources estimated from wastewater discharges and pollutant concentrations in them was also low. Stormwater sewerage, random uncontrolled discharges from sedimentation pools, leakage from landfills, non-canalized settlements, as well as the lack of information about the quality and quantity of wastewaters of this category requires that they are classified as non-point pollution. Information has been gathered on non-point pollution sources of both distributed (urbanized and agricultural spaces, landfills, gas stations, industrial sites, etc.) and linear (highways of various categories) types.

2 Институт инженерных и агроэкологических проблем сельскохозяйственного производства Представлены результаты расчетов современного уровня внешней и внутренней фосфорной нагрузки на систему Дудергофских озер, расположенных на территории Санкт-Петербурга.Оценка внешней нагрузки выполнена с использованием модели ILLM в сочетании с данными спутниковой съемки водосбора, оценка внутренней нагрузки -на основе данных натурных наблюдений.Установлено, что в условиях средней водности на поверхность водосбора поступает 2,621 т Р/год, водосбором и его гидрографической сетью удерживается 1,627 т Р/год, нагрузка на акваторию озер с водосбора составляет 0,994 т Р/год.При этом внешняя нагрузка на озера системы пропорциональна их водосборным площадям.Внутренняя нагрузка оценивается в