Durum wheat (Triticum durum Desf.) is an economically important crop cultivated worldwide for producing quality pasta products. This crop takes up approximately 8% of the world’s wheat production. Within the EU durum wheat represents 13.2% of the total area and 9.2% of the wheat production. In 2017, it was grown on 2.7 million hectares only in the European Union (EU), providing an output of about 9 million tons. The cultivation area of durum wheat in Europe is mostly concentrated in the Mediterranean region: Italy, Spain and France together account for 80% of the total EU production (Europoean Commission, 2018). Italy is the top EU producer country and a traditional durum wheat growing region as it dedicates half of the total EU durum wheat area to this crop, thus accounting for 45% of the entire EU production, with a yield of about 3.2 t.ha⁻¹. In recent years Bulgaria has increased the grain production of this crop and increased the consumption of products made from durum wheat (Panayotova et al., 2021).

The stationary field experiment was carried out at the Uman National University of Horticulture (certificate of the National Academy of Agricultural Sciences No. 87) (Stationary field experiments of Ukraine, 2014) in the Right-Bank Forest Steppe of Ukraine with Greenwich geographical coordinates 48° 46' of northern latitude and 30° 14' of eastern longitude. The scheme of the experiment includes 11 variants  of combinations and separate applications of mineral fertilizers including the control variant without fertilizers.