an investigation of the factors affecting apple wastes in zanjan province, iran

the increasing trend in agricultural wastes is one of the most important challenging problems in most countries, especially the developing ones. policymakers and researchers being on the alert, do their best to reduce these wastes. the main purpose followed in this study, done in 2007, was to investigate the factors affecting the level of wastes of apple in zanjan province, iran. the study population consisted of apple growers in zanjan. to select the sample population stratified random sampling was employed, the sample being comprised of 200 apple growers. the questionnaire's validity was confirmed by judgement ofa panel of faculty members, university of tehran and as well by some experts from zanjan’s agriculture jihad organization. reliability was assessed through cronbachs'-alpha with ?=0.83 indicating that the reliability of the questionnaire was acceptable. spss/win 11.5 software was made use of for data analysis, and factor analysis method was employed to identify the factors explaining the dependent variable's variance. the results revealed that seven factors explained 78.9 percent of the total variance. inappropriate post- harvesting management with 19.69%, of significance was found out as the first important influencing factor. other factors were recognized as excess supply, ecosystem, infrastructural- planning, pre-harvesting management, harvesting management, and inefficeny of organizations.