Analysis of the main stages of improvement of technical means for the application of mineral fertilizers

In the Republic of Belarus, crop yields have increased 3.5–5 times over the past 60 years due to the combined result of work in the field of breeding, mechanization of fertilizers and chemical plant protection products application, which is a significant achievement of science and practice [1, p. 28]. One of the main criteria for evaluating the effectiveness of mineral fertilizers is considered to be the payback of 1 kg of NPK, which should be at least 8 kg of grain or 10–12 feed units by all crops on arable land [2, p. 113; 3]. To achieve such results, spreaders must perform high-quality distribution of mineral fertilizers within the established agrotechnical deadlines. The criterion for assessing the quality of the distribution of mineral fertilizers over the field area is the coefficient of variation, which is defined as the ratio of the standard deviation to the average dose. In addition to uniform distribution over the field area, high-quality incorporation of mineral fertilizers with tillage tools is also essential. As for the timeliness of applying the specified doses of fertilizers within the established agrotechnical deadlines, the most important factors here are the availability of equipment at farms during the busiest period and provision of high-performance fertilizer spreaders. It should be considered, that agricultural chemicalization machines are used from early spring to late autumn, and their annual load exceeds the same indicator for other agricultural machinery. In addition, the operation of fertilizer spreaders involves interaction with aggressive media, which imposes appropriate requirements to ensure their reliability. It should be noted that currently unmanned aerial vehicles are beginning to be actively used to introduce chemicals [4, p. 2]; publications on the development and testing of nanofertilizers are increasingly appearing in the scientific literature [5, p. 319]. In this regard, in order to determine further trends in the improvement of technical means for fertilization, it is necessary to analyze the main stages of the development of these technical means and identify the distinctive stages of their improvement.

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