The importance of agriculture lies in the fact that its organic substances are an irrevocable source of energy without which the existence and everyday life of man and a substantial part of the animal world are impossible. Man, as a higher biosystem, defines the nature and importance of agriculture as a production sector.
The World Commission on Environmental Sustainability (1987: 43) identified sustainability as addressing current needs without compromising on the possibilities of taking the resources of future generations. Although this definition seems sufficiently well formulated, it has about 40 different definitions of the concept of sustainability in the context of policy actions and their implementation throughout the process.
Dynamically developing plant growing continuously sets challenges to the system for training specialists, who have to be able to develop competitive and sustainable agriculture. In the conditions of market economy and various forms of land management, for the development of plant growing are needed managers and executives, who will be able to apply successfully the scientific principles of research, analysis, support and management of cost-effective agricultural production units. The degree programme Plant Growing provides preparation of such specialists. Education in Crop Science and Production offers such kind of training by application of innovation moments such as practical semester and development of integrated project.
The technological processes in growing crops follow specific sequence and every diversion from the quality indicators leads to unintended negative consequences. Sowing is a continuation of the pre-sowing soil treatment, which, in its turn, is a continuation of deep ploughing. In conventional farming, a number of advantages of deep ploughing can be lost unless an appropriate pre-sowing soil treatment is applied, followed by laying the seeds in the ground under optimal conditions.
In the cases, when the choice of technology for growing and harvesting row crops, and more specifically, the type of tillage applied, is a result of analysis of physical, mechanical, chemical and biological properties of the soil, a reduced number of soil treatments can be suggested, or, in some cases, even implementing the subsequent technological processes after no till treatment.
A great number of farmers do no not possess the technological set of machinery for implementing innovative technologies. In such cases, the possibility of quick reconstruction of existing machinery, which should be able to operate following different technological sequence. Sowing is the most important of all technological processes and the preparedness of seeders to work in an integrated mode is of extreme importance, so that the can meet the challenge of reduced number of soil treatments.
In the design and development of new operating equipment, machinery and apparatuses for agriculture, the main criterion for their evaluation is their resistance in a working environment, or, their specific energy consumption, respectively. To define the resistance in progressive or rotary motion, the specific design features, the mode of impact and the environment parameters should be taken into, consideration. In progressive motion the resistance depends mainly on the speed. It begins to increase considerably at speeds over 5 km.h -1 when the second gear is of extreme importance. With apparatuses using rotary motion it is important to note that the resistance also depends on the square speed. At idle stroke particularly, the excessively high speeds increase significantly the power needed. With fans the main criterion for minimum specific energy consumption can be determined by the specific relations between the power needed, the rotation frequency, the discharge and pressure head.