DB—Lancaster Farming, Saturday, March S, 1983
KEARNEYSVILLE, WV - Fresh
market fruit may some day be
pushed from the tree by long
aluminum fingers rather than
plucked by human hands. But
before this can occur, the shape of
American orchards will have to
change, a USDA agricultural
engineer observes.
Trellised orchards are a com
mon sight in many parts of Europe
and other areas of the world where
land is scarce, but they would
constitute a revolution in the U.S.
fruit industry.
Donald L. Peterson of USDA’s
Agricultural Research Service
said that orchardists still turn to
hand labor to pick fresh market
apples and peaches even though
there are a number of commercial
mechanical harvesters that shake
the tree and catch the falling fruit.
A number of other devices
designed to rake or rotate the fruit
off the tree have not made it to the
commercial stage.
The problem? With apples, it’s
too much bruising, says Peterson.
Vigorous shaking causes the
■ clustered fruit to knock together
before detaching. And falling fruit
may bounce off a lower branch on
the way to the catching surface.
Apples, Peterson pointed out, are
more prone to bruising than
peaches because they are picked
riper. However, because the peach
crop ripens unevenly over a two
week period, vigorous shaking
causes some peaches to detach
before they are ripe enough.
The solution? Gently push the
fruit off a tree whose branches are
all on the same level.
To gently push the fruit,
Peterson designed a simple device
that can be attached to a tractor or
self-propelled machine and
lowered through the fruiting
branches. This rod press fruit
remover, as Peterson calls it,
Tomorrow’s fruit pickers could have metal fingers
consists of an aluminum panel
projecting closely spaced rods—
the fruit pushers. At first sight, it
calls to mind a giant-size Indian
bed of nails upside-down, but its
effect on the tree and its fruit is
quite the reverse.
The aluminum rods have rubber
tips to protect the tender fruit, and
each is equipped with a spring
tension release in case it comes to
rest on a branch instead. After a
certain pressure, the release
allows the rod to slide back
through the panel and thus prevent
the limb from snapping. As the
device is withdrawn from the tree,
the released rods are
automatically reset. A padded
catching surface beneath the
branches collects the falling fruit.
The result of this careful
engineering has proven equal to or
better than good hand-harvesting
in preliminary tests, Peterson
said. He and colleagues at the
Appalachian Fruit Research
Station harvested 80 to 90 percent
Fancy - Extra Fancy apples and 88
percent No. 1 grade peaches with
this equipment. Hand-harvesting
yields anywhere from 60 to 90
percent fruit of this quality,
depending on the experience of the
picker.
Peterson said the rod press
remover can be adapted to large or
small fruit growing enterprises by
simply changing the size of the
panel. Before the device can be
useful, however, the grower must
have properly shaped trees, and
that will probably require
trellising.
Horticulturist Stephen S. Miller,
also at the Appalachian Fruit
Research Station, works closely
with Peterson to develop tree
shapes compatible with
mechanical harvesting. He has
trained peach trees in a “V” shape
by adapting the Australian-
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developed Tatura trellis. Because
these trees have only two scaffold
limbs projecting from opposite
sides of the tree, there are no limbs
in the path of falling fruit.
For apples, Peterson and
cooperators at West Virginia
University are experimenting with
a Lincoln canopy trellis developed
in New Zealand. The trees are
trained in a “T” shape with the
fruiting branches growing in a
single horizontal tier supported by
a post-and-wire system running
down the row. Miller is also
developing free-standing apple
trees with compact fruiting
canopies.
Trellised orchards have
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caught on in the U.S., said
Peterson, because of the initial
cost of setting them up. He
predicts, however, that they may
prove to be less costly and labor
intensive to maintain because they
lend themselves to mechanization.
They also bear a harvestable crop
sooner.
Miklos Faust, plant physiologist
and chief of the ARS Fruit
Laboratory at the Beltsville
Agricultural Research Center,
said that very high-density or
chards of dwarf trees (700 to 1,000
trees per acre) have become more
not
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popular in Europe because of the
scarcity of land. (Dwarf trees
require trellising because of their
systems.) Land costs in Europe
are six to seven times higher than
in the U.S., he explained, making
the initial outlay for a trellised
orchard a fraction (one-third to
one-half) of land value. In the U.S.,
however, trellising costs may nm
two to three times more than the
land.
For more information on the rod
press fruit remover, contact the Ag
Research Service at Beltsville,
Md.
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