A Survey of Pistachio Farmers' Knowledge of Pest Status, Economic injury Level and Common Pistachio Pest Control Methods of Pistachio Orchards in Rafsanjan county

The common pistachio Psyllid (Agonoscena pistaciae) has wide distributed pest in most pistachio orchards all around the world. This study aimed to evaluate awareness of farmers with economic injury level of the common pistachio psyllid. The research is a kind of descriptive which has done through a survey method in 2017 year. The statistical population consisted of all pistachio farmers in Rafsanjan Township. Using Krejcie and Morgan’s Table and stratified random sampling method with proportion to size, 380 farmers were selected from six area as sample. Questionnaire was the main tool for data collection. According to the results, farmers considered pistachio psyllid as the most important pest in the region and are more aware of this pest compared to other pests. Most farmers, spray as soon as observing the pistachio psyllid. This shows that pistachio producers couldn’t tolerate the psyllid population as long as it reach the threshold of economic losses. It seems that pistachio producers don't pay attention to the economic injury level and thus many problems arise in the Rafsanjan Township pistachio gardens including improper use of chemicals, resistance to the psyllid and the loss of biological control effective factors. Based on correlation test, there are significant differences between extensional programs and knowledge of pistachio producers about pistachio pests. Therefore, familiarizing farmers with pests and their economic injury level requires a dynamic extension programs.