Influence of Sunflower Seed Agricultural Communities on the Agrophysical Properties of Chernozems

In the field experiment, the effect of binary sideral sunflower mixtures on the bulk mass, structural coefficient and degree of aggregation of arable and sub-arable horizons of typical heavy loamy chernozem was studied. It is shown that the mixing of crops in sideral agricultural communities in most cases led to an increase in the yield of subsequent grain crops and an improvement in the considered agrophysical properties of chernozem. A decrease in bulk weight, an increase in the coefficient of structurality and the degree of aggregation in both the arable and sub-arable horizons under all mixed agricultural communities were more effective compared to the same horizons under the variants with clean crops. The most significant was the improvement of agrophysical properties in soils under the agricultural communities of soy + sunflower and payza + sunflower. The ability of mixed sideral agricultural communities to effectively reduce the bulk mass makes it possible to reduce it on over-compacted soils, thereby improving the quality of these soils.