A Comparative Study of Fuel Use and Income Analysis of Potato Production with Bacteria-antagonists in Leningrad Region of Russia

The study provides information on modern microbial preparations effect on losses reduction from potato pathogens, yield and fuel consumption per unit of production. Five potato varieties and seven microbial preparations were studied. The negative control samples received no biological treatment, and the positive control samples were processed with chemical fungicide thiabendazole. The research data include diseases prevalence, biological efficiency, healthy potato yield, notional net income, relative consumption of diesel fuel and theoretical fuel economy for studied potato varieties in case of Leningrad region. The positive control batches with thiabendazole treatment had relatively low yields of all types of processing for all potato varieties. The best yield results of all treatment variants were noticed for complex microbial fertilizer (CMF) and for B. subtilis Ch13. The potato yields of any microbial preparations processing variant were higher than the yields of the negative control batches. Lowest relative diesel fuel consumption was noted for batches with processing based on B. subtilis Ch13 and CMF for Nevskiy variety - 7.7 and 7.8 l/t and Sante variety - 7.5 and 7.4 l/t, respectively. Maximum theoretical annual fuel economy in the region can be achieved with usage of B. subtilis Ch13 treatment for all five studied varieties - 272.5 thousand l/year.