Economic importance, biological properties, cultivars and production practices of sunflower

Abstract

Sunflower is the most important oil crop in Serbia, that produces high quality oil for human consumption and technical purposes as well. World sunflower area remarkably increases, while seed yield increases smoothly. Sunflower is considered as young crop. It started cultivate since middle of XIX century, but with intensive breeding program. Serbia takes distinguishable place in world sunflower breeding. Sunflower is the modest crop according to the soil and fertilizers requirement, with high drought tolerance and low input requirement, but nevertheless it is high yielding crop. Sunflower is high cost-effective crop because of full applying of machinery in production practices and has high market value. With numerous of domestic hybrids, which are at world level, and appropriate applying cultural practices recommended in this paper, Serbia is considered as country with third place in the world regarding sunflower yield.

Suncokret je najvažnija uljana biljka u nas, od koje se dobija vrlo kvalitetno ulje za ljudsku ishranu i tehničku upotrebu. Površine u svetu pod suncokretom značajno se povećavaju, a prinos blago raste. Relativno je mlad usev, počeo se gajiti od sredine XIX veka, ali sa vrlo intenzivnim oplemenjivanjem, gde naša zemlja ima zapaženo mesto. Skromnih je zahteva u pogledu zemljišta i đubrenja i vrlo otporan na sušu. Zahteva niža ulaganja, a postiže stabilne i relativno visoke prinose. Potpuno mehanizovani proces proizvodnje i visoka tržišnost čine ga vrlo profitabilnim. Sa velikim izborom domaćih hibrida, koji su na nivou svetske selekcije i blagovremenim i pravilnim izvođenjem svih agrotehničkih mera iz preporučene tehnologije proizvodnje, Srbija je na trećem mestu po prinosima u svetu.