Effects of green manure crops (pea-oats mixture, rape, clover) and ways of their tillage down into the soil on common root rot propagation in spring wheat were studied. Root rot pathogens affecting the rhizosphere and plants of spring wheat during its growing period were revealed. Investigations were carried out in Irkutsk Region in 2012-2015 in a three-course grain-fallow crop rotation with the variants of bare (control) and green-manured fallows and two ways of tilling green manure crops down into the soil by plowing to the 20-22 cm depth and disking to the 10-12 cm depth. Phytopathologic expert examination revealed high affection of seeds before sowing. The analysis of phytopathogenic fungi complex showed that the fungi of the Fusarium type dominated in the rhizosphere, at pre-root parts of the stems, and the roots of spring wheat from coming-up to ripening. The best phyto-reclaimer against root rot was rape when tilled by disking to the 10-12 cm depth. On the average for four years, it provided, with both ways of tillage down, the lowest propagation of wheat root rot. The gain in grain yields of spring wheat, in this case, was 0.18 t/ha on the average for four years. As the gain in grain yields, the best variant proved to be clover as green manure both with plowing and disking its green mass down into the soil. Disking green manure crops into the soil to the 10-12 cm depth, as compared with plowing to the 20-22 cm depth, reduces root rot propagation in the seedling phase of wheat after pea-oats mixture, rape, clover by 7.5, 8.4 and 9.7%, respectively, and provides the gain in wheat grain yields by 0.07-0.43 t/ha.

Results are given from field and laboratory studies on 15 barley varieties in terms of their main productivity and grain quality indices, conducted under conditions of the southern forest steppe of Western Siberia for the period of 2011-2015. Barley varieties included on the State Register of the Russian Federation and new promising ones developed at the barley breeding laboratory of the Siberian Research Institute of Agriculture (Omsk) were used as the object of study. It was found that the formation of main grain quality (protein, starch, and crude fat content, and husk content) and productivity (thousand-kernel weight and yielding capacity) indices were mainly influenced by growing conditions of a year. The correlation between grain quality and productivity elements was found to be negative and varied from moderate to strong depending on growing conditions. On the contrary, there was a strong positive contingency between grain quality indices. Hulless barley varieties were superior to chaffy ones in quality but yielded to them in productivity. At the same time, two-row forms exceeded multi-row ones in grain quality in each group. Certain varieties showed high response to improved environmental conditions and stability of environmental response as to a number of indices: Sibirskiy Avangard (protein content, productivity), Sasha (productivity), Omskiy 90 (protein content), Omskiy 95 and Omskiy 99 (protein, starch, and crude fat content), Omskiy 96 (crude fat content, husk content), Omskiy 100 (crude fat content, productivity), Podarok Sibiri and Omskiy Golozerny 2 (crude fat content), Omskiy Golozerny 1 (protein and crude fat content). These results could be successfully used in further breeding work.

Tolerance of the Norway maple (Acer platanoides L.) of being introduced to the forest-steppe areas near the Ob was studied. The studies were conducted in the arboretum of the Siberian Research Institute of Plant Production and Breeding Branch of the Institute of Cytology and Genetics, SB RAS. Norway maple nurslings were brought from Omsk in 1986, and successfully introduced. The Norway maple is highly tolerant of winter conditions, its sprouts ripen well and, only in some severe winters, one-year growths are partially damaged. Good reproductive potential of Norway maples makes it possible to form full-valued seeds in a new environment, natural regeneration is observed. Norway maple plants derived from self-sown seeds are characterized by significant variation in their morphological parameters. Coefficients of variation have been observed to decrease in 5 years after coming-up, the plants even out as to biometric characteristics, that indicates stabilization of the growth processes and increase in the adaptation level of plants by this time. The highest annual growth in Norway maple seedlings was observed in the fifth year of their life. The Norway maple is distinguished by high winter hardiness, frost resistance, capable of withstanding large temperature drops, plasticity and high ornamental qualities, so that it can be used for landscaping city streets and rest areas.

A number of radish accessions bred home and abroad were examined based on conventional methods for growing vegetables, with the purpose of evaluating parent material for breeding of radish varieties for key economic characters, including productivity, early maturity and yielding capacity. Studies were carried out in Barnaul at the JSC "Industrialny" in 2014 and the West-Siberian Vegetable Experiment Station in 2016. For protected ground were studied Camelot, Corsair and Caiman accessions, sown in February and March, and Carmen and Mercado accessions, sown in spring at two dates. Studies in both experiments were conducted compared to the standard Donar F1. Fourteen accessions sown outdoors were evaluated compared to the standard Krasa Altaya. Observations showed that the radish accessions under study had different responses to lighting intensity during their winter-spring growing period. Under low lighting, Donar and Mercado accessions have demonstrated the fastest rates of commercial root yield formation with compact rosettes of leaves that meet the requirements of radish growing in hydroponic greenhouses. Mercado and Sparkber were remarkable among other accessions for the complex of traits that allowed recommending them to be used as parent material in the further breeding work.

A varietal study of garden strawberry was carried out in Novosibirsk Region during the period of 2014-2016. Ten cultivars originated from Siberia and other regions were taken as the object of the study: Festivalnaya (control), Vima Kimberly, Nancy, Florace, Isaura, Darselect, Daroyal, Truffle, Solnechnaya Polyana, and Ostara. Productivity, winter hardiness and disease resistance of the cultivars were evaluated. Cultivars, most suitable for growing in the conditions of West Siberian forest steppe, were determined. The cultivars Ostara and Florace had the highest productivity of 18.31 and 8.44 tons per ha, respectively, which proved to be much higher than that of the control cultivar Festivalnaya with its 6.44 tons per ha. According to the observations of 2015, the cultivars with degrees of lesion of 0.5 points and lower should be considered as relatively resistant to strawberry leaf spot, these are Ostara (0.2), Solnechnaya Polyana (0.0), and Truffle (0.5). In 2016, the cultivars above had the lowest degrees of leaf spot lesions 0.7, 0.6 and 1.3, respectively. However, the number of plants affected with gray mold was very high in these three cultivars, especially in Truffle. The observations of 2015-2016 demonstrated high winter hardiness of the recognized cultivars Festivalnaya and Solnechnaya Polyana and unrecognized cultivars Ostara and Truffle (frost damage from 0 to 1 point). Low winter hardiness was shown by Vima Kimberly, Nancy, Isaura, Darselect, Daroyal, and Florace (frost damage from 3 points or higher).

A technical potential of the Russian agribusiness industry was shown to reduce due to decreased number of machinery and its aging. To support the efficiency of farm machinery, an effective maintenance service is necessary to be organized. High levels of farm machinery availability can be sustained through the regional machinery performance support system. A method was developed to support the efficiency and availability of farm machinery using maintenance service clusters. This system provides for various options of customer service at the following levels: a farm, a district, and a region. There was suggested a method for calculating parameters of the regional machinery performance support system, according to which the parameters of this system are calculated for model clusters of maintenance service of a farm and a district. The parameters obtained are adjusted taking into account actual basic indices of a zone serviced by this level of the system. These indices are the volume of mechanized works to be performed, the intensity of demand for maintenance and repair of parts, assemblies and units of machines, and professional skills of machine operators. There are given concepts of farm and district model levels, for which parameters of the machinery performance support system are calculated. Changing over to the actual levels (district, farm) occurs through coefficients of demand for maintenance service, which take into account specific character of a serviced zone. The suggested method for calculating parameters of the machinery performance support system was realized in Novosibirsk Region. The model service clusters at farm and district levels were substantiated. There are given the coefficients for changing over from model clusters to the actual ones.

Instrumentation facilities for monitoring and measuring physical properties of plants in breeding, varietal study and commercial production of sea buckthorn were developed at the Siberian Physical-Technical Institute of Agrarian Problems, Novosibirsk. The research methods included 1) analyzing a condition of instrumentation in production of horticultural crops; 2) identifying critical operations in technological processes; 3) defining and substantiating the methods and means, and based on them, developing controls; 4) studying features of physical processes while monitored; 5) developing principles of operation of the controls; 6) investigating metrological characteristics of the controls developed and confirming the effectiveness of them to be used in practice. There are given specifications of the mist installation TUMAN-6 to water herbaceous sea buckthorn cuttings.

There is described the device for determining the extent of root growth in nurslings. There is shown the design of the instrument KALIBR for measuring diameters of trunks, fruits and branches of plants, which is developed based on a contactless optical shadow sensor. There is substantiated the principle of operation of combination instrument for measuring tearaway forces of berries from stems and peel strength properties. All the technical solutions developed are protected by industrial patents. Tests carried out under field conditions on plantations of fruit-and-berry crops have shown that these engineering tools have high technical and metrological characteristics. The use of the engineering tools developed provides the breeders with effective assistance in developing new machine-harvestable varieties of berry crops, and ensures minimum losses due to determining the optimal harvesting dates.

Results are given from studies on using a computer-based program, called the virtual tool LISTOMER, which has been developed at the Siberian Physical-Technical Institute of Agrarian Problems, and intended for measuring total and affected areas of the plant leaves and identifying degrees of plant affections with diseases, pests, and other environmental factors. Thirty eight plant samples of Novosibirskaya 89 cultivar of spring common wheat, creeping wheat and awnless bromegrass with signs of brown rust, Septoria disease and powdery mildew were analyzed. The measuring procedure included scanning of a leaf with signs of a disease, producing a multicolored projection, followed by digital image processing with LISTOMER. The affected leaf area was singled out from the total area, and marked with color. Then, the quantitative characteristics of the affected area were calculated in both absolute and relative units. The standard scales and methods for estimating the intensity of lesions in per cents or scores were used. Brown rust was estimated on the Strakhov's scale, Septoria disease on the James scale, and powdery mildew on the scale developed at the N.I. Vavilov Research Institute of Plant Industry. The virtual tool LISTOMER is used to process statistical data and create experimental data bases. It allows determining total and affected leaf areas with the necessary accuracy, and recording degrees of plant affections to standardize quantifiable findings as to certain diseases.

There is given an approach to forecasting breeding values of spring triticale collection samples based on information obtained from studies on their quantitative traits. The algorithm of forecasts is cluster analysis carried out by three different ways. The features of clustering methods were studied by way of example of a research into triticale collection samples. The Ward's method, using dispersion analysis to study distances between clusters, has proven to allow more fully evaluating breeding material, and to increase effectiveness of selecting parental pairs. This method optimizes the minimum dispersion within the closest clusters, and aims at their integration and creation of small-sized clusters. Each step of the algorithm unites a pair of clusters, resulting in the minimum increase in the objective function that is the intra-group sum of squared deviations. The results obtained by the Ward's method have produced most objective and informative clustering of triticale collection.

Results are given from a comparative analysis of the biochemical composition of raw stuffs and concentrates produced from skins of marals of different sex and age groups. The skins of maral stag, doe, calf and heifer calf in 3 pieces each were the material of research. The highest protein content of 92.8% was noted to be in the doe skin. The maximum fat content among the samples examined was observed in the heifer calf skin, and made up of 8.2%. The summer skin contained more moisture, protein and ashes by 10.3, 1.0 and 7.0% as compared to the winter skin. The concentrate from the doe skin exceeded those from skins of the other maral groups in the content of alanine, glycine, proline, isoleucine, methionine, phenylalanine, and also in the amino acid sum. The summer skin of maral stag considerably surpassed the winter one in the content of all amino acids, except for cystine: 1.66 times for dispensable amino acids, and 4 times for essential amino acids. The concentrate from the maral stag skin was superior in the macro elements sum; concentrate from the maral calf skin in the trace elements sum. The tonic effect of biosubstances was determined on experimental rabbits and mice. The maximum tonic effect was observed, when mice were fed on powders from the maral heifer calf skin. The hypotensive activity of pantocrine on the base of the maral skin averaged 20%. Biosubstances produced from the skin using the technology developed possess biological activity and tonic action that allows considering the maral skin as valuable raw material of antlered deer farming.

From 2011 to 2015 were studied botanical origins of more than 200 samples of honey sold at fairs held in Novosibirsk. Honey for sale comes from Novosibirsk Region, Altai Territory, and Kemerovo Region, located in 9 soil-climatic zones. There was carried out the pollen analysis of honey that is quality studies based on a suggestion that the flowers of almost all plant species contain nectar with a touch of pollen. The botanical origins of honeys were established by pollens found in them; main bee plants of the south of Western Siberia were determined. There were identified 110 plant species belonging to 32 families, from which honey bees collected nectar. The dominant species were established as follows: common melilot for Novosibirsk Region, wild angelica for Kemerovo Region, common buckwheat for Altai Territory. Much of the plants (18.2%) in honeys are of the Asteraceae family, where the main proportion is wild species, except for sunflower. The plants of the Leguminosae family are 12.7 per cent, where 43 per cent of the total species number is fodder crops: melilot, Hungarian sainfoin, alfalfa, peas. Pollen grains of plants from the labiate and mustard families were 8.2 per cent each, 7.3 from the rose family, and 6.4 per cent from the parsley family. More than a half of the plant species established were families represented by one species. By representation of pollen grains were determined the dominant plant species critical to honey collection in the northern forest-steppe zone (areas near the Vasyugan Swamp), which is promising for honey production. These species are tillet from wild species, and common melilot and rape from introduced species.

Results of twelve-year field agricultural experiments during 1995-1996, 2002, 2004-2012 with a Bulgarian wheat variety Sadovo 1, conducted on a leached meadow-cinnamon soil of the experimental base of the Institute of Soil Science, Agrotechnology and Plant Protection in Southern Bulgaria are presented in this paper. The aim of the research was to assess an influence of meteorological factors and irrigation on water use efficiency of plants and grain yield of a spring soft wheat variety Sadovo 1. In the early years, from 1995 to 2007, experiments on controlled watering when a difference between the temperature of a canopy and the surrounding air (measured with infrared thermometer) reached 1°C was carried out in comparison with the control without irrigation. In 2008 three experiments with irrigation at different temperatures between the canopy and the surrounding air were carried out in comparison with a not irrigated control. In 2009 there were applied variants without irrigation at different growth stages spike development, ear formation and milk ripeness, as well as a variant of optimal irrigation and a control without irrigation. High correlations (>0,7) were shown between wheat yields and the climate factors and between wheat yields and irrigation depths. Single watering during interphase periods "heading" and "milk ripeness" increased the efficiency of water consumption and grain yield. The efficiency of water consumption (from 0.95 to 1.99 kg/m3) by the wheat variety Sadovo 1 was higher in the experiment with watering at the temperature difference of more than +1?C. With increasing the standard deviations of rainfall the efficiency of water consumption by plants and grain yield increased, too. When the standard deviations of the indicators of soil moisture decreased in the irrigation experiments, grain yield increased.

Results are given from comparative analysis of polymorphism in the k-casein gene CSN3 in Simmental herds from different eco-geographical zones. The steppe zone is represented by the JSC "Ivanovskoe", Novosibirsk Region, and the LP "Galitskoe", Republic of Kazakhstan; the highlands by the Altai Agricultural Experiment Farm. Studies were conducted at the biotechnology laboratory of the Siberian Research Institute of Animal Husbandry, SFSCA RAS, and at the animal biotechnology laboratory of the Pavlodar State University. The genotypes of the k-casein gene were identified with the PCR method, the genotype frequencies in different herds and correlations between genotype and milk production performance were determined. The studies have shown that the Simmentals from steppe Kazakhstan are characterized by higher frequency of the CSN3 BB genotype by 11.7-13.1%, of the B allele by 0.142-0.157%, and by lower frequency of the AA genotype by 16.3-17.7%, as compared to animals from the highlands of Altai Territory and steppe areas of Novosibirsk Region. The Simmentals from both steppe areas had nearly equal milk yields of 5300-5500 kg, while the herd from the highlands noticeably yielded to them in milk production performance. But milk of Simmental cows from the highlands and the steppe areas of Kazakhstan was characterized by higher fat content by 0.43-0.68% compared to the cows from the steppe areas of Novosibirsk Region. The animals from the highlands had lower milk protein content by 0.03-012% compared to Simmentals from the steppe zone. No significant differences in milk yield, fat and protein content have been seen in cows with different genotypes of the k-casein gene within the same herd.

Infectious disease incidence rates in farm animals in Altai Territory for the period of 1964-2015 were analyzed based on the material from Altaian Territorial Station for Animal Dangerous Disease Control and the State Archive of Altai Territory. Epizootics were described by using the comparative-historical and comparative-geographical methods. Statistical data on the outbreaks, spread and elimination of infections in horses, pigs, cattle, sheep and goats were taken into consideration and analyzed; the proportion of farms having animal disease problems was revealed. There was carried out the retrospective analysis of the spread of 50 infectious diseases of bacterial, viral, chlamydial, mycotic, mycoplasmal and rickettsial etiology in four groups of farm animals with the purpose of identifying a source of pathogen. Pathologies were classified as to mechanisms of transmission. A study on a complex of etiological factors has shown that a group of bacterial diseases with alimentary mechanism of transmission prevails in the structure of infectious pathologies, and the sources of pathogens are domestic animals. It was found that viroses by their share in the structure of pathologies were not of significant epizootic importance, and since 1973 a considerable reduction in viral disease incidence has been recorded. With that, there are four epizootically important diseases in horses, ten groups of diseases in cattle, and in nines in pigs and small ruminants.

Meat production and quality in the young stock of sheep raised in Transbaikal Territory were studied depending on their genotypes and ages of slaughtering. Three groups of animals were observed: 1) hybrids of the first generation (1/2 Zabaikalskaya Fine-Fleece + 1/2 Kazakhskaya Half-Hair), 2) hybrids of the second generation on Kazakhskaya Half-Hair, 3) three-breed hybrids (1/4 Zabaikalskaya Fine-Fleece + 1/4 Kazakhskaya Half-Hair + 1/2 Kuchugurovskaya Rough-Wool). The experimental animals were under the same raising conditions. The three-breed individuals had advantages in the growth and development as well as in slaughtering qualities over their two-breed analogs of the first and second generation. The animals of the third group at 2.5 months of age was found to have a significant advantage in the average live weight over their contemporaries from the first and second groups by 6.1 and 5.2%, at 6.5 months of age by 5.7 and 0.9%, at 18 months of age by 10.9 and 5.5%, respectively. The slaughter yield in the three-breed young animals was higher than that in the hybrids of the first and second generation by 6.9 and 3.6%, respectively. The three-breed individuals were distinguished by the highest energy value of meat. The hybrid animals of the first generation at 4.5 and 18 months of age were remarkable for this characteristic, too. The fat-protein ratio was most optimal in meat from young gelded rams at 4.5 months of age.