Effectiveness of use zeolite in vegetable growing in the footdown zone of southeast Kazakhstan

Natural zeolite from the Shankanay deposit is effective for use as an additive to mineral fertilizers when growing vegetable crops in the foothill zone of south-east Kazakhstan. Zeolite added to the soil with mineral fertilizers leads to an increase in the water-physical properties of dark chestnut soil. The water permeability of these options has increased noticeably. The use of zeolite and fertilizers helps to increase the mobile forms of nitrate nitrogen, mobile phosphorus and exchangeable potassium. The addition of zeolite reduces the concentrations of mobile forms of heavy metals in the dark chestnut soil under study. Thus, the concentration of cadmium in the soil in a 0-20 cm layer under sowing table beets when using 2 tons of zeolite decreased by 50% with a control value of 1.0 mg/kg, which does not exceed the maximum permissible concentration.A positive effect of zeolite fertilizer on the productivity of vegetable crops was revealed, which makes it possible to increase the total yield of table beet roots from 42.8 t/ha in control to 43.3-62.7 t/ha in fertilized variants with an increase in yield from 4.4 t/ha up to 19.9 t/ha. The yield of cabbage was 25.7 t/ha on the control, and increased by 6.5-16.5 t/ha on the fertilized variants. The use of zeolite and fertilizers contributes to the production of vegetables with good and high quality indicators. Application of both zeolite and fertilizers increased the dry matter, sugar and vitamin C content of the studied crops. The amount of nitrates in the products decreased with the addition of zeolite and increased in other variants of the experiment, but did not exceed the maximum permissible concentration. Thus, in the control variant, the nitrate content in cabbage heads was 223 mg/kg wet weight, in the variants with zeolite 2t/ha - 205 mg/kg, in beetroots - 248 mg/kg and 195 mg/kg, respectively.