Improvement of winter wheat baking quality in ecological cultivation by enlargement of row spacing and undersown intercrops

Summary

Under ecological crop growing conditions, considerable problems consistently arise in fulfilling the baking quality of winter wheat demanded by consumers. The “wide row” procedure shows promising potential for effectively using the nutrient supply in ecological cultivation for the production of winter wheat with high baking performance. Increasing the distance between rows of winter wheat from 12.5 cm to 50 cm proved advantageous for the indirect quality parameters sedimentation value and gluten and crude protein concentration. Either no yield decreases or low decreases only up to 10% were noted. Because of an increased tendency to erode and in order to improve of the preceding crop’s value, creation of a green zone with legumes between the rows is necessary. To prevent competition between cover and catch crops, mulching of catch crops is required.