Mechanization for Fruit Growers

Mechanization for Fruit Growers

Mechanization for Fruit Growers. I’m Greg Martin with today’s Fruit Grower Report.

Farming operations have been using mechanization for years. Tractors, combines, drills, etc. But tree fruit farmers just can’t pull a combine into the orchard each fall and harvest the crop. Qin Zhang, WSU Prosser says there really are too many different issues between harvesting corn or wheat with a combine and apples.

ZHANG: For the corn and the combine we really don’t care if we have some broken kernels as long as the percentage is within a limit, its okay. And if you say okay we have some broken apples and send to market and no one will buy. And then because of that we have a very low level of mechanization.

Zhang says that picking fruit like apples really is a very specialized task. But he does ask if there is a way to borrow some of the mechanization ideas from field crops.

ZHANG: The system we developed at the University of Illinois you can only push a button on the tractor to start the engine and the tractor can go from your garage to the field, do all the work automatically, autonomously. And when it’s done come back to the garage and shut off. Job is done.

The big question is whether or not that same kind of automation can be developed for orchards. Zhang says that they are looking at ways to mechanize tasks dealing with disease and insects.

ZHANG: We can put a sensor on the applicator and the applicator would access the nutritional stress of the crop and then to control the sprayer, the nozzles in real time, automatically in real speed.

That’s today’s Fruit Grower Report. I’m Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.

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