UDC 581.132+633.88
DOI 10.36461/NP.2025.76.4.009

PHOTOSYNTHETIC POTENTIAL OF ECHINACEA PURPUREA PLANTS IN THE SECOND GROWING SEASON
S V. A. Gushchina¹, Doctor of Agricultural Sciences, Professor;
E.O. Nikolskaya², Candidate of Agricultural Sciences; Deputy Director;
N.Yu. Lobanova¹, Candidate of Agricultural Sciences, Associate Professor;
G.V. Ilyina¹, Doctor of Biological Sciences, Professor
¹Federal State Budgetary Educational Institution of Higher Education "Penza State Agrarian University", Russia, tel. 8 (8412) 62-83-67, e-mail: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.;
²Branch of FBI «RCFH» – Forest Protection Center of the Penza Region, Russia

The rate of leaf area growth and the size of the assimilative apparatus of cultivated plants directly depend on the agricultural technologies applied. Echinacea purpurea during the early flowering cycle cannot compete with weeds. Therefore, from 2016 to 2018, for highly productive agrocenoses the effect of different agricultural technologies on photosynthetic potential of Echinacea purpurea plants in the second growing season was examined in the meadow-chernozem soil at the Penza State Agrarian University collection plot. The largest photosynthetic surface area during all growing cycles was formed by agrocenoses of winter crops, where, to control weeds, the soil was chemically treated with Lazurit, SP (0.5 kg/ha) before the flowering cycle, followed by spraying with the herbicide Miura, KE (0.6 l/ha) in the 2-4 leaf stage of annual and perennial cereal weeds. At the stem elongation stage, the leaf area was 40.29 thousand m2/ha, within the bud stage it increased by 7.79 thousand m2/ha, and during the flowering cycle it reached a maximum of 50.28 thousand m2/ha. When weeding manually, the data was slightly lower. During the stem elongation stage, the leaf area was only 1.50 thousand m2/ha less, within the bud stage – by 1.32, and during the flowering cycle – by 0.34 thousand m2/ha. The photosynthetic potential in the first growing season was maximum – 1,516 thousand m2 · day/ha. A particularly significant advantage was achieved by applying herbicides twice, so the photosynthetic potential in the second growing season was 1,679.5 thousand m2 · day/ha. The maximum net productivity of photosynthetic potential of 2.63g/m2 ∙ day was observed during the bud-flowering cycles, when leaf area rapidly increased to its maximum and without any sharp decline for a long time. The highest value of 3.02 g/m2 ∙ day wad gained with the Miura herbicide treatment in the 2-4-leaf stage of early spring sowing.
Keywords. Echinacea purpurea (Echinacea purpurea (L.) Moench), leaf surface area, photosynthetic potential, net photosynthetic productivity, sowing, weed control, herbicide.

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