Investigation of awareness level of farmers producing hazelnut in Kocaeli province and pesticid used in hazelnut

Hazelnut, which is a perennial, bush-shaped, hard-shelled fruit in the Betulaceae family with commercial value, and Turkey provides approximately 70% of its production in the world. Hazelnut cultivation is carried out on 7284 ha land in Turkey. Distribution of hazelnut cultivation by provinces; Ordu, Giresun, Samsun, Sakarya, Trabzon and Düzce. Kocaeli province also has an important place in hazelnut production. Hazelnut cultivation is carried out on an average of 79 801 decares of land. 15 196 tons of hazelnuts are obtained from these lands. According to TUIK data, the yield in Kocaeli was determined as 102 kg/da. This shows that the average yield in the area where hazelnut is grown is very low compared to the world average. In this study; It is aimed to investigate the awareness levels of the farmers producing hazelnuts in Kocaeli and the pesticides used in hazelnut. The knowledge of our farmers in the use of pesticides in the fight against diseases and pests in hazelnut, which pesticides are used more intensively and the factors that may cause low yield were investigated. The number of producers to be surveyed was made with 100 producers using the 'Simple Random Sampling Based on Ratio Averages' method. When we look at how many years the producers have been farming, 12% are 5-10 years old, 27% are 10-20 years old, and 61% are farmers over 20 years. It was stated that 29% of the land assets of the producers were 0-5 da land, 50% were between 5-20 da and 21% were hazelnut orchards between 20-50 da. In the study, in the fight against diseases and pests in hazelnut, chemical control is used more than other control methods, the use of herbicides in chemical control comes first, followed by insecticides. 49% of the manufacturers stated that they read the drug packages and 51% followed the recommendations of the drug dealers in adjusting their pesticide doses.