Joint International Conference on Long-term Experiments ...

LONG-TERM FIELD EXPERIMENTS AS THE BASE OF SITE SPECIFIC
FARMING
KESZTHELY LONG-TERM FIELD EXPERIMENTS
Tamas Kismányoky – Zoltan Toth
University of Pannonia Georgikon Faculty of Agriculture
Long-term field experiments existed, exist and will exist at least in places, where their
importance is recognised. Long-term field experiments are the source of such iformation
from which we can learn a lot about the factors that influence soil fertility and its
sustainability. In most cases effects and interactions can be understood only from longterm
data even if different soil and climatical conditions are compared to each other.
These information are valuable for farmers, extension consultants, decision makers as
well as scientists either in local or wide scale general concern.
Long-term field experiments can be considered such living laboratories that let us
study the physical and biological parameters of the agricultural environment reliably,
further give scientists and policy decesion makers basic information in order to follow
and control environmental mechanisms.
The survey and the register of the European long-term field experiments were
published by Körschens (1994, 1997, 1999, 2000). Valuable publications were also
made in this topic by Mazur et. al (1993), Debreczeni B. (1994), Leigh and Johnston
(1994), Merbach et. al (1999), Smith et. al (2001), Láng et. al (2002), Debreczeni K and
Körschens, M. (2003).
Most of the long-term field experiments were set up to study the effects and
interactions of crop rotation, continuous cropping, organic and mineral fertilizers,
microelements, liming, soil tillage, water management, plant protection, nutrient
respond of new varieties and hi-breds, etc. Similar goals were the reason for the
estabilishment of the long-term field experiments in Keszthely, Hungary.
The long-term field experiments of the World and Hungary are listed in Table 1.,
Table 2. and Table 3.
Table 1. Long-term field experiments of the World
(Debreczeni K., Körschens, M. 2003)
Continent 10-20 20-50 50-100 > 100 year Total
Europe 24 292 81 20 417
Africa 32 37 69
Asia 28 7 35
Australia 7 14 21
North-America 1 41 21 5 68
South-America 9 1 10
World’s total 25 409 161 25 620
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