Cropping Systems: Applications, Management and Impact

64 Srđan Šeremešić, Ivica Đalović and Dragiša Milošev

and pest and diseases and weed suppression for major cash crops (maize,
sunflower, sugar beet, soybean etc). Thus, selection of the agricultural
machinery for soil preparation or crop protection is usually accustomed to
meet the demand of the row crops. Accordingly, one could say winter wheat
growing is associated with the lower economic return (lower value of its
production), while most agronomical attributes favor it growing. This
explained lower enthusiasm of farmers for winter wheat growing in modern
agricultural production based on cash crops.

Table 1. Winter wheat yield in the Southern Pannonian

Basin -Vojvodina Province

Periods Indicators of winter wheat productivity

WP (kg ha-^1 ) ± SD APV% Harvested area (ha) ± SD

1961 -

1970

2,69 ± 0,63 2,48 409730 ± 75916

1971 -

1980

4,32 ± 0,60 1,42 403546 ± 41629

1981 -

1990

4,91 ± 0,43 0,89 351968 ± 41760

1991 -

2000

3,94 ± 0,65 1,68 355955 ± 56706

2001 -

2010

4,07 ± 0,75 2,83 327474 ± 22138
WP - Mean wheat productivity was calculated as sum of total wheat production
divided with total wheat cropland area for each year. APV (%) = Average
production variability is sum of production variability for each year (%) calculated
by the formula = SD of yield/average yield for each periods (Pan et al., 2009).

The rotation cropping of winter wheat is a common agricultural practice.
For a long period of time 2-year rotation, maze-winter wheat was the most
common and typical rotation of field crops in the region of the East Europe.
According to Molnar (2003) industrial crops such as sunflower, sugar beet and
later soybean were introduced in the late 1970s as an alternative to maize as a
row crops in rotation. Introduction of the industrial crops had influenced the
cropping technology and expanded crop sequence to the 3-year rotation system
in which winter wheat remains as a crop that separates two row species. Later
on during the 80-ies and 90-ies this sequence was extended to a 4-year rotation
to successfully manage pest and diseases of the row crop not for the cereals.
Crop rotation can add sustainability to a cropping system by improving yields
without increased inputs and by promoting soil restoration, though
improvement of soil fertility in rotation cropping has not always been followed
with higher yield (Revees, 1997). Added value of crop rotation is usually
observed after 3rd sequence and in practice is rarely accomplished. Most
authors reported higher yield when rotating wheat with other crops (Berzsenyi