The effect of sowing dates and forecrops on productivity and grain quality of the winter soft wheat variety “Krasa Dona” in the southern part of the Rostov region

The study was carried out on blackearth (chernozem) soils of the southern part of the Rostov region at the FSBSI “Agricultural Research Center “Donskoy”. The current paper has presented the results of the three years’ study (2017–2019) of the effect of sowing dates and various forecrops on the productivity and quality of the winter soft wheat variety “Krasa Dona”. There has been established a high resistance of the variety to lodging in all variants of the trial. There has been presented the dynamics of productiv-ity of the variety “Krasa Dona”, depending on the sowing dates and various forecrops. There has been identified a positive reaction of the variety to sowing in a fallow at the optimum dates (September 20 and 30), where the maximum yield was 7.77–8.62 t/ha.When sowing at a later date, the yields tended to be lower. There has been identified a high adaptability of the variety “Krasa Dona” to the sowing dates in a non-fallow, where it forms a high yield when sowing at different dates. It was found out that the winter soft wheat variety “Krasa Dona” formed different yields according to the studied variants of forecrops and sowing dates due to the number of productive stems per unit area and due to the head productivity. On average for 2017–2019 the winter soft wheat variety “Krasa Dona” formed the 3rd class grain, when sown in a fallow or after peas and the 4rd class grain, when sown after sunflower.The calculation of the grain production profitability showed that the greatest economic effect was obtained by sowing the winter soft wheat variety “Krasa Dona” after peas, it was 169.2–194.5% depending on the sowing date. The minimum profitability was 136.1-147.2% after sunflower. On average, over the years of research, the maximum conditional net income 52 508–58 887 rubles/ha was obtained when the variety was sown in a weedfree fallow