Abstract
With minimal soil tillage in mid-March, disking fields with LDG-10 harrow to a depth of 8-12 cm effectively destroyed emerging weeds and loosened the soil surface.In the favorable crop season of 2024, the highest dry hay yield (3.74 t/ha) obtained was under minimal tillage with simultaneous sowing of the early-maturing lucerne (Medicago sativa L.) cultivar Krasnovodopadskaya and safflower cultivar Irkas, exceeding pure lucerne by 1.68 t/ha (with a 1.8-fold increase).Compaction of lucerne with Sudan grass produced 2.84 t/ha (1.4 times higher than pure lucerne).In the extremely dry crop season of 2025, minimal soil cultivation in integration with sowing lucerne alongside the safflower cultivar Irkas resulted in a dry hay yield of 2.09 t/ha.A comparable hay yield of 2.04 t/ha resulted in the sowing of early-maturing lucerne cultivar Krasnovodopadskaya in combination with the Sudan grass cultivar Ailana-2017, which obtained a hay yield 2.2 times higher than the yield of pure lucerne.Under minimal soil cultivation with a single-species lucerne sowing, dry hay yield reached only 0.93 t/ha, remaining substantially lower than in the compacted cropping systems.