Influence of agrotechnical methods on yield formation and quality of seeds of oil-bearing flax

In the field experiments, it was established that the increase of seeding rate significantly raised the density of plant stand per unit area under crops, which stepped up the competition for factors of life. A gradual decrease in field germination rate was recorded in accordance with the increase of seeding rate, and the difference between the extreme seeding rates was 3.6 percentage points for early timing of sowing, 2.3 ‒ for the average timing and 0.8 for the late timing of sowing. Changing the timing of sowing and crowdedness of crops determined the formation of plants of different architectonics and productivity. The plants sown in the middle timing of sowing formed the largest number of pods. On average, by the factor the number of pods was more by 3.8% than in early sowing and more by 7.3% than at the late one. As a result of an increase in seeding rates from 4 to 12 million pieces per hectare, the number of pods decreased by 2.67 times in early sowing, 2.6 times in the middle and 2.59 times in the late sowing. In most cases, the transfer of the sowing timing led to decrease in the number of seeds in one pod. Late sowing also led to a slight decrease in the mass of 1000 seeds, however, at a reliable level, these differences are only observed between early and late timing of sowings. Increasing the seeding rate from 4 to 6 million pieces per hectare was accompanied by an increase in the mass of 1000 seeds, which is possibly connected with the formation of them at the expense of pods of the basal branching shoots. On average, over the years of research, irrespective of the seeding rate, the yield of seeds was significantly higher for the sowing of culture when the soil reached a state of physical mellowness. The translocation of the sowing timing on average for ten and twenty days was accompanied by a decrease in seed yield by 0.02 and 0.18 t/ha, respectively. The values of yield of flax were the closest in the early and middle timings of sowing, whereas at the late timing of sowing the difference was the highest. The most intensive increase of the yield was observed with increasing of seeding rates from 4 to 6 million pcs/ha. In the sequel, the differences between the variants 8 and 10 million pcs/ha at early timing of sowing, 6 and 8 million pcs/ha at middle and late timing of sowing were within the range of the experimental error or were close. Under the influence of the investigated factors, the yield of straw varied from 1.24 to 1.79 t/ha. Sowing of oil-bearing flax at early timing provided a higher yield of straw, an average of 1.74 t/ha. Conducting of sowing in the late timing was accompanied by decrease in the content of the bast tissue.