QUALITY OF POST-HARVEST RESIDUES WHEN GROWING MAIZE IN THE SYSTEM OF MIXED CROPPING.

Potential environmental impacts of growing maize as monoculture lead to efforts focused on finding other potentially suitable crops or their combinations that could replace the pure maize cultures. The most frequent and most effective combination is a mixed crop of maize and legumes. The presented paper deals with the issue of the quality of post-harvest residues when growing maize in the system of mixed cropping. In the field experiment, yield and quality of post-harvest residues were studied during the growing season in the following variants: maize grown as monoculture and maize grown in the mixed culture with bean. Compared with the C:N ratio in the post-harvest residues of maize grown in monoculture (39:1), a benefit of mixed cropping was significantly reduced C:N ratio in the biomass of post-harvest residues that was approaching 30:1 which is considered optimal for their decay. The biomass of post-harvest residues from the mixed crop of maize and bean for silage contained by 70 kg/ha (54 %) more nitrogenous substances than the biomass of post-harvest residues from the pure maize culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]