BKÜ Arama: How to Search Registered Pesticides in Turkey

What is BKÜ GPT?

BKÜ GPT is a free search tool for Bitki Koruma Ürünleri (plant protection products), abbreviated BKÜ in Turkey, or BKU without the Turkish Ü. It covers insecticides, fungicides, herbicides, acaricides, plant growth regulators and biological control products. BKÜ arama, the Turkish phrase for this search, currently covers 5,597 registered products and grows as new ones are registered.

This post is about how an advisor runs that search during a working day: where to start, which filter closes which question, and what to verify before signing a written recommendation.

How do I run a BKÜ search?

Type whatever you have. The search box takes the crop, the pest name, the active ingredient, the trade name and the registration number. Mixing them in one query is fine.

Type codling moth apple and you get every product registered in Turkey against codling moth on apple, with its rate and its pre-harvest interval. No opening label PDFs one at a time.

In practice there are three entry points, and which one you use depends on the grower's first sentence on the phone.

If the grower describes a symptom (yellow speckling on leaves, rot in the bunch), start with crop and pest. If the grower names a product that worked last season, start with the trade name. If the dealer is out of stock, start with the active ingredient and list the equivalents.

Why is searching by active ingredient safer?

Trade names change. The same active ingredient is sold by different companies under different names, at different concentrations, in different formulations. Search by active ingredient and you see every equivalent the grower could actually buy.

The second benefit is resistance management. The international resistance committees (IRAC for insecticides, FRAC for fungicides, HRAC for herbicides) sort active ingredients into groups by mode of action. IRAC was founded in 1984 for exactly this: giving the industry one shared vocabulary for slowing resistance.

The rule is simple. Repeating the same group accelerates resistance. Changing the trade name changes nothing if the group stays the same. Two packages, two brands, one mode of action. That is the most common reason behind a grower saying the spray stopped working.

When you write a season-long program, an active ingredient search lets you pick the next application from a different group on purpose. On BKUGPT, searching one active ingredient and then switching to another for the same pest takes a few seconds.

How do I filter by pre-harvest interval?

The single number that breaks more recommendations than any other is the pre-harvest interval (PHI). A product can control the pest perfectly, and a 14-day PHI still rules it out when harvest is 5 days away.

The PHI filter on the search screen takes a ceiling in days. Set it to 7 and only registered products with an interval of 7 days or less stay on the list. Close to harvest this usually cuts the list by more than half, and what remains is what you can safely discuss.

There is a commercial side to this. Residue alerts are a real cost in Turkish fresh produce exports. In 2025 the EU food alert system logged 105 pesticide residue notifications on Turkish products, 51 of which ended in rejection at the border, and more than half of the rejected consignments were a single crop, peppers. Most of those come from the right product applied at the wrong time rather than the wrong product. Filtering on PHI at the moment of recommendation settles it on the phone.

How do I narrow BKÜ search results?

A bare aphid search returns hundreds of rows. The filter fields bring the list down to one screen:

• Crop
• Pest, disease or weed
• Active ingredient
• Formulation type (EC, WG, SC, SL, WP)
• Manufacturer
• Category (insecticide, fungicide, herbicide and other groups)
• Pre-harvest interval (PHI), as a ceiling in days
• Registration date (last 12 months, last 3 years, last 5 years, or a custom range)

The registration date filter is underused and worth knowing. Look at what was registered in the last 12 months and you have already seen, at the start of the season, the products your dealer just brought in and your clients will ask you about.

If a filter combination matches a recurring client situation (apple grower, codling moth, PHI under 14 days), bookmark the page. The same BKÜ arama opens with one click next season.

An example: a vineyard recommendation in 3 minutes

A vineyard grower calls about powdery mildew. Harvest is roughly 10 days out and the last two sprays used the same fungicide.

You type powdery mildew grape. The list comes back. You set the PHI filter to 10 days and everything that does not fit the harvest window drops off. From what is left, you skip the active ingredient used in the previous two applications and pick a different one.

Trade name, active ingredient, rate per decare, pre-harvest interval and manufacturer go into the report. Under 3 minutes total. The same job with catalogues and label PDFs took half an hour.

What do I verify before writing the recommendation?

A BKÜ search is where a recommendation starts. Three checks before you sign:

1. Confirm the registration status is current. A cancelled BKÜ should never appear in a written recommendation.
2. Compare the rate against the current label on the pack the grower will actually buy. Labels change between revisions.
3. Confirm the pre-harvest interval against the grower's real harvest plan, not an estimated calendar.

For the abbreviation itself and what counts as a BKÜ, see What is a BKÜ?. For the step-by-step lookup flow, see How to look up a BKÜ in Turkey.

Frequently asked questions

What is BKÜ arama? Turkish for plant protection product search: finding registered pesticides in Turkey by crop, pest, active ingredient, trade name or registration number. Free at bkugpt.com.

Can I filter a BKÜ search by pre-harvest interval? Yes. The PHI filter sets a ceiling in days and removes products that do not fit the harvest window.

How do I find other trade names with the same active ingredient? Type the active ingredient name. Results list every registered product containing it, with concentration and manufacturer.

Does BKU arama work without the Turkish Ü? Yes. BKU and BKÜ are the same abbreviation and return the same results.

How many products are searchable? 5,597 registered products at last count, growing as new products are registered.

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BKÜ GPT is informational. Verify every value against the current product label before issuing a recommendation, and growers should follow their licensed agronomist's instructions before applying any pesticide.