ASABE Technical Library - Abstract

Abstract. Northeastern North America is the world’s leading producer of wild blueberries with over 93,000 ha under management and producing 148 million kg of fruit valued at $600 million annually. There are 15 to 25% fruit yield losses during the harvesting with existing commercial blueberry harvester. Currently, there are no protocols available for the farmers community related to fruit maturity and time of harvest which can result in increased fruit losses during harvesting along with the reduced berry quality. Wild blueberry fields were selected in Atlantic Provinces to examine the impact of different harvest timings on berry picking efficiency of the harvester. The experimental design used for the study was split plot design with harvesting season as a whole plot and harvester’s ground speed and rpm were used as sub plots. The harvesting season was divided into three categories (early, middle and late season). The fruit losses data were collected at three different levels of ground speed (1.2, 1.6 and 2 km h-1) and header revolution (26, 28 and 30 rpm) for each category of the season from each randomly selected plots within each field.

Results revealed that fruit losses were higher in late season compared to early and middle season harvesting. A factorial analysis of covariance (ANCOVA) showed the main effects of ground speed, header rpm, time of harvesting (season) and their higher order interaction were found to have significant (p=0.05) effects on picking efficiency of harvester. The results of MMC revealed that a treatment combination of 1.2 km h-1 and 26 rpm can serve better in minimizing berry losses as compare to all other treatment combinations in early, middle and late season harvesting. The results also showed that higher ground speed in concomitance with higher header rpm resulted in substantial increased fruit losses in each harvesting season but these losses were become more prominent in late season due to over-ripened berries. Selecting an appropriate combination of ground speed and header rpm is very important to enhance harvesting efficiency by reducing berry losses when dealing with early, middle and late season harvesting.

The abstract is often the only part of the paper to be read, so include your major findings in a useful and concise manner. Include a problem statement, objectives, brief methods, quantitative results, and the significance of your findings. The abstract should be no more than 250 words long.