The effects of drought on crop production

Vágó, Katalin

Nowadays, it is getting more evident that excessive weather conditions are becoming more frequent. The climatic changes of the world (warming up, accumulation of gases in the atmosphere causing the greenhouse effect) did not avoid the agriculture of Hungary either. The climat determines a system of conditions for the agriculturist, thus not every plant species is able to grow successfully in any season at any site of the planet. Moreover, yearly variation of the weather may exert either negative or positive effects on the growth and development of the same plants, consequently, variation in yields are expected.

The last 15 years (1981-1995) experienced extraordinary drought and higher than average temperatures, which caused heavy losses in the agriculture of the Great Plain, and the feasibility of agricultural production became questionable. In addition to that, the drought enhanced the damages caused by wind-abrasion. All those preliminaries prove the necessity of a strategy of fighting against drought.

The Szent István University, faculty of Agriculture and Environmental Management, Institute of Agronomy performed experiments of soil tillage in maize cultivation.

The model calculations prove that ploughing combined with some tillage, i.e. loosening of the surface have a positive effect on the return (of investment) under favourable soil and weather conditions, whereas the direct sowing was under all circumstances the less economic method.

Results prove that the best way to reduce the damages of drought is the information on the frequency of drought on a given site and on the critical extent of drought referred to the respective plant species or variety, moreover, the knowledge of the different methods of tillage as means of counteracting the deleterious effects of water shortage, which may offer a choice of alternatives adapted to the particular phenological stage and environmental situation. The diminition of risk caused by weather anomalies could be approached by a variety of means.

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