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Spraying with various types of agrochemical substances, including biostimulants, is one of the basic agricultural treatments affecting the yield size and quality. The selected type of spraying nozzles can influence biological effectiveness of the applied substances. A 2-year field study showed which of the investigated nozzles increase the effectiveness of foliar application of a free amino acid biostimulant. The type of nozzle used for the application of biostimulants was reported to significantly influence the biometric properties and yield of soybean cultivation. It was observed that spraying nozzles, which generate finer droplets positively influence positively the biometric properties of plants and seed yield of seed than injector nozzles, which produce coarser droplets. A significant reduction of the thousand seeds mass after applying the biostimulant with standard flat fan nozzles is an exception. A 25.61% increase in soybean yield was reported after applying the biostimulant with standard flat fan nozzles and a 11.35% increase – with injector nozzles..

The study assesses the impact of the economic size of farms on the efficiency of their material and energy expenditure, based on 679 farms from the Lubelskie Voivodeship. The analysis was made for the years 2013-2015 and the farms were divided into six economic size classes. 5 indexes for the efficiency of material, energy and material-energy expenditures were calculated for all farms. The aim of the work was to select a group of farms with the highest efficiency of energy and material expenditure. It was found that economically small farms managed this expenditure most effectively, as evidenced by the highest values of 4 out of 5 analyzed indexes. Very small and medium-small farms demonstrated the highest efficiency of material expenditure. In contrast, energy expenditure was most efficiently used by medium-small farms. The farms that were the largest economically were characterized by the highest efficiency index of material and energy expenditure, calculated as the ratio of total production to the expenditure.