MODERN SOIL AND AGROCHEMICAL RESEARCH IN THE FIELD OF SUBTROPICAL AGRICULTURE AND HORTICULTURE: ACHIEVEMENTS AND PROSPECTS

The main results of the research work carried out by Agrochemistry and Soil Science Laboratory – FRC SSC of RAS for the modern period (1990–2020s), as well as promising areas of fundamental and applied soil and agrochemical research in subtropical agriculture and horticulture fields are presented. The main achievements during this period are: criteria of land evaluation for tea plantations; comprehensive fundamental research based on multifactorial experiments with fertilizers; scientific concept of soil fertility optimization and application of mineral fertilizers in tea cultivation with a multicomponent nutrition system and soil-plant diagnostics methodology; conceptual model of soil fertility evolution depending on fertilizer systems; agrochemical features of cultivation and recommendations for fertilizing new promising crops (pawpaw, kiwi); comprehensive assessment of a number of biophilic trace elements in the system soil – tea plant; parameters of raw tea materials composition for a wide range of chemical elements; systematic studies of the soil agrogenic transformation with agricultural use of various intensities and the process of their self-healing in the absence of a long-term fertilizer load (according to a complex of material-structural and functional indicators); assessment of chemical soil contamination with prolonged use of mineral fertilizers; comprehensive study of the biological activity of natural soil and agrocenoses (forest, tea, hazelnuts, peach); the concept of optimizing the agrobioecological soil status during long-term tea cultivation that is applicable to all perennial crops. Research prospects are the following: search for methods to optimize the processes of humification-mineralization, nitrogen fixation for forming pools of biogenic elements and carbon sequestration in soil; development of predictive models of meteorological dependence of soil fertility parameters and fertilizer efficiency; development of a comprehensive assessment of soil conditions and their agrogenic changes for perennial crops with diagnosis/prediction of processes direction and speed; investigation of the genotypic specifics of plants interaction with soil and fertilizers to identify/create cultivars resistant and effective in case of insufficient mineral nutrition; working out of methods for mobilizing hard-to-reach pools of biogenic elements (primarily phosphorus).