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average of watered treatments resulted in a 3.35 % yield increase, while the average of
digestate-treatments increased the yield by 20.8 %, compared to the control. The
positive effect of digestate benchmarked against water based on its nutrient content and
its stimulating effect on soil microorganisms.
We have to take into account, that if the digestate is applied in full after sowing,
not all the nutrients can be utilized by plants, part of them will move down to lower soil
layers and may pollute soil water. If the digestate is split into two or three portions at
the time when the plant needs it, the utilization of the digestate by plants will be more
efficient, the application will be environmentally friendly. Nowadays in Hungary the
yearly amount of the digestate can be utilized only before sowing (except our
experiments), because the digestate, as a category, is not defined in Hungarian law. The
digestate is handled as sewage sludge. On the basis of our results, and also considering
the results from tests on other crops, the application of the digestate, based on Ndemand
of plants, split in two or three portions is the right way both in economic and
environmental respects. We computed the grain to straw ratio from the averages of the
water and digestate treatments (Table 2).
Table 2: Grain to straw ratio of winter wheat in the experiment.
Control
Digestate
Water
Mean + Std. Dev.
0,819 + 0,037
0,907 + 0,110
0,857 + 0,075
The digestate treatments increased this ratio, which means that digestate resulted less
straw and more yield in the treated plots.
2./ Triticale: Triticale is the typical crop of marginal soils. It has higher yield than rye
has, that is why triticale displaced rye from the better sandy soils. The average yield of
this plant on the field plots of Bátortrade Ltd, with the use of fertilizers, is 2.8-3.1 t ha -1 .
In our small-plot experiment the samples were collected from sampling plots of 1 m 2 in
size, and after threshing the grain and the straw yield was taken. The yield was higher
than the average as a result of the manual harvesting and handling.
For technical reasons, this experiment was only treated with the digestate. The
results obtained from the treatments 1-7 can be seen in Figure 2.
Table 3: Grain to straw ratio of triticale in the experiment.
Control
Digestate
Mean + Std.Dev.
0.702+ 0.074
0.820 + 0.079
Comparing these results to those obtained with winter wheat, treatments were more
efficient since we found significant treatment effect (p