Determination of technical features and application problems of plant protection machines used in Ankara province agricultural enterprises

In this study, it was aimed to determine the technical characteristics and application problems of spraying machines used in agricultural enterprises operating in Ankara province. For this purpose, data were obtained by conducting a survey with 381 agricultural enterprises in 19 districts of Ankara province. It was decided that it would be more accurate to examine the enterprises by dividing them into groups and cluster analysis was performed to determine the groups. As a result of the analysis, two groups were formed as 1st group enterprises (149 enterprises) and 2nd group enterprises (232 enterprises). Descriptive statistics, chi-square analysis and t-test were applied to determine the differences between the groups. According to the results of the research, the average land size was found as 21.75 ha in the 1st group and 15.67 ha in the 2nd group. The average number of sprayer/enterprise was 1.06 in the 1st group and 1.02 in the 2nd group, and the average number of sprayer/tractor was 0.77 in the 1st group and 0.90 in the 2nd group. The majority of the enterprises (83.73%) had one tractor, and it was determined that the tractors were mostly under 10 years old. According to the average of the enterprises, 90.36% of the sprayers were field crop sprayers, 6.60% were garden sprayers and 3.04% were knapsack sprayers, and it was determined that the majority of all types of sprayers were under 10 years old. It was observed that the most important criterion taken into consideration by the enterprise managers in the selection of spraying machines was the current tractor characteristics, and that they mostly reduced the spray height and reduced the pressure in order to reduce drift during spraying. The most common problems encountered by the producers in spraying machines were high machine prices, followed by the poor quality of machine parts and insufficient technical service network. It was determined that the parts that producers had the most problems with in their spraying machines were the spray nozzles.