Horticultural characteristics of chestnut growing in Turkey

Abstract

Chestnut is one of the important nut crops in Turkey. However, studies on production, marketing, and characteristics of chestnut growers is very limited in the literature. Also, the type of chestnuts production changes depending on the region. This is the result of being chestnut is a natural forest tree. To find out the growing characteristics of chestnut in Turkey a highly structured questionnaire study is done. The purposes of this study, therefore, are (i) to explore the typology of chestnut growers; (ii) to outline the characteristics of the farms, their production, care activities (such as weed management, fertilization, orchard floor etc., major insects and disease problems and their management), and harvest characteristics; and, (iii) to analyze marketing characteristics (storage, marketing channel, market structure). The bulk of the research data are collected from randomly selected 279 chestnut growers all around the Turkey. Descriptive statistics were used for summarize the research results. The results of per characteristic were presented with detailed according to the regions. For this aim, recommendations are also provided for improving chestnut production.