Soya – is the main albuminous and oily crop of the world agriculture. It takes an important place in the structure of crops, grain, fodder and food balance. This is a strategic crop in solving the global food problem that is why it is grown on all continents in the main agricultural regions of our planet. In recent years soya has no competitors by the rates of crops growth and production volumes. Though Ukraine takes the first place in Europe by area of soya cultivation, its yield still does not correspond to potential possibilities. One of the factors which limit potential productivity is pests. Soybean protection from them is an important and relevant component for getting stably high yields and raising the quality of seeds simultaneously. Especially effective it has been monitoring in recent years as a result of an increase of sown areas and yield due to implementation of intensive technologies for soya cultivation. However, it should be taken into account that many species of harmful insects damage soya at all stages of ontogenesis, at the same time the loss of yield can make 30–40%. Harmful insect species from the following series have been discovered on soya crops in the Eastern Forest-Steppe of Ukraine: Orthoptera, Homoptera, Hemiptera, Thysanoptera, Coleoptera and Lepidoptera.

In the Eastern Forest-Steppe zone of Ukraine, which is characterized by a sharp change in weather conditions during the growing season of agricultural crops, it is very important to grow hybrids that are most adapted to frequent weather anomalies during the growing season. This can significantly reduce their negative impact on the productivity of spring wheat. The results of a study of 20 samples (soft spring wheat Triticum aestivum L.) and (durum spring wheat Triticum durum) of different ecological and geographical origin for adaptability when changing environmental conditions (Ukraine, Russia, Kazakhstan, Mexico, Sweden) are presented. Adaptability indicators were determined by the following characteristics: mass of one spike, mass of grain from one spike, number of grains from one spike, mass of 1000 seeds, mass of grain from 1 m2. Samples that have high plasticity and stability by these characteristics have been identified. As a result of the conducted studies, the dependence between the main signs of productivity were established: the number of grains from one spike, the mass of grains from one spike, the mass of 1000 seeds, the mass of one spike, the mass of seeds from 1 m2 of Triticum aestium and Triticum durum samples. We have considered the adaptability of selection characteristics of samples by years with different environmental conditions: air temperature, relative humidity, precipitation amount, and hydrothermal coefficient.

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As cultural historians have shown, various discourses about food and eating are correlated with processes of religious identity construction within European pre-modern societies. This article focuses on such a relationship between bodily and structural contexts during the transformative phase of the late sixteenth century in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth. A selection of exemplary polemical sources of Roman Catholics and Orthodox Christians illuminates the significance of fasting for the semantical constructions of religious collectives in times of societal upheaval. Regarding the increasingly uncertain circumstances due to the union of the Church, this paper argues that religious elites revolved around norms of fasting, which represented a semantic means of defining and defending their respective collective selves, their political claims, and legitimation in relation to a collective Other. Considering bodily practices such as fasting to be a methodological lens, the paper attempts to develop a novel perspective on the study and understanding of religious ordering in early modern European contexts.

One of the most dangerous pests of cabbage crops which can damage plants in the budding and flowering phases in all areas of their cultivation is a rape blossom beetle (Meligethes aeneus Fabricius, 1775). The pest is widespread throughout Ukraine; it causes significant damage to the crops every year and reduces the seed yields. It should be noted that the rape blossom beetle is not new to our country and as a pest of rape and other crops from the cabbage family has been mentioned since 1845, and a detailed description of its morphology, biology and ecology can be found in the works of the nineteenth century. It is established that in the Eastern Forest-Steppe of Ukraine the first individuals of the rape blossom beetle appear on the flowering wild growing plants (first of all on dandelion and buttercup) when the average daily temperature exceeds 8 °C, it is the middle of the first decade of April and the beginning of the third decade of April. The mass emergence of the rape blossom beetles takes place when the daily average temperatures are at the range of 9–13 °C and the sum of the effective temperatures above 5 °C is at the range of 100–113 °C, it is the middle of the second decade of April and the end of the third decade of April. The females of the rape blossom beetle usually lay 2–3 eggs into one bud of spring rape or mustard. When protecting the crops from the rape blossom beetle the highest technical efficiency was noted when applying the binary mixture of the microbiological preparation Actophyte, 0.25 % of emulsion concentrate in the dose of 4.8 L/ha and systemic insecticide Biscaya, 24 % of oily dispersion (0.25 L/ha) and in 14 days after spraying it was 76.6 % on white mustard, 74.3 % on Chinese mustard and 76.2 % on spring rape. The highest growth increase in the yield capacity was observed in the same variant; for white mustard it was 0.431 t/ha, for Chinese mustard it was 0.265 t/ha and for spring rape the growth increase amounted to 0.277 t/ha. As a result of the researches it is established that the weight of 1000 healthy seeds is 2,6996 g, and the weight of the seeds damaged by the larvae of the rape blossom beetle is 0.4213 g, so it is reduced by 84.4 %. The filling of the damaged seeds is 6.8 times more, which indicates that they are smaller in diameter and frail. The undamaged seeds of spring rape contain 35.92 % of fat, and the damaged seeds contain only 17.48 %, which is 2.05 times less. The protein content in the undamaged seeds was 30.97 % and in the damaged ones it was 32.23 %, that is 1.04 times more. The germination rate of the undamaged seeds of spring rape under the laboratory conditions on the eighth day was 90.0 %, and the germination rate of the damaged ones amounted to 58.0 % and was lower by 32.0 %.