Blueberry Harvest Mechanisms

Blueberry (Vacciniumcorymbosum L.) is a perennial plant that shed leaves in winter. It is from Ericaceae family and it is in the form of bushes. It grows in temperate climates and its motherland is America. It spread from American culture 110 years ago. It can grow in lightly textured and acidic soil. For this reason, the areas where agriculture can be done are limited. Because the production quantities are not enough, the selling prices are also high (Çelik H., 2008). Grape berries can be harvested by hand and machine. For the Blueberry harvest, harvesters with three different types of harvesting mechanisms were produced. The first blueberry harvester was manufactured in 1956, adapted from a mechanical cranberry picker. This machine had a mechanism consisting of a six-row scraper stick (Farooque A., 2014). These machines with high collection capacity reduce the need for labor and the cost of harvest. Blueberry manual harvesting hectare requires 1300 h of labor, while single row harvesting machine requires 25 h of labor/hectare. Thus, the cost of harvest falls from $ 2.8 per kg to $ 0.26 per kg (Takeda F. et.al., 2017). These machines are not economical for medium and small sized farms. In machine harvest, there are some problems for this plant. These problems are fruit falling on the ground during fruit harvest, the harvest of fruit that has not reached sufficient maturity, fruit and plant damage during picking. A lot of work has been done and continues to be done. However, sufficient harvesting efficiency has not yet been achieved. Blueberry should be harvested with a high quality and long shelf life that will appeal to the consumer.