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Economic Analysis of an Apple Harvest and Infield Sorting Machine

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Mechanical Harvest of Fresh Market Apples

Part of the book series: Smart Agriculture ((SA,volume 1))

Abstract

U.S. apple industry is facing challenges as the high production cost is hurting its competitiveness nationally and internationally. Since apple harvest and postharvest handling account for a majority (>50%) of the production cost, researchers developed innovative technologies to reduce the harvest cost and lower the fruit postharvest handling fee. An innovative apple harvest and infield sorting (HIS) machine was developed by combining harvest platform and infield sorting technologies. This study conducted the economic analysis on the HIS machine by comparing machine cost and cost savings generated by adopting the machine. The economic evaluation was conducted based on the machine-induced harvest efficiency increase of 43, 53, and 63%, and an operation of 360 h per harvest season. The machine can benefit both fresh market and processing apple growers. For fresh market apple orchards, when the processing apple incidences ranging from 5 to 15%, the annual benefits by adopting the HIS would range from $13,500 to $78,400 for the machine price between $100,000 and $160,000. With the same price range, benefits of adopting the HIS machine for a processing apple orchard with processing apple incidence between 80 and 90% ranges from $23,900 to $81,700. The economic analysis could help apple growers in deciding whether to purchase the HIS machine, and provide baseline information for dealers when they introduce the HIS machine to apple growers. By improving labor productivity and reducing fruit postharvest handling cost, the HIS machine brings benefits to U.S. apple growers, and thus is promising for commercialization.

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Credit Authorship Contribution Statement

Z. Zhang: Writing—original draft. Y. Ampatzidis: Writing—review & editing. L. Fu: Writing—review & editing. Z. Zhang: Conceptualization, Investigation, Methodology, Project administration, Writing—original draft, Writing—review & editing.

Disclaimer

Mention of commercial products or orchards in this paper is only for providing factual information and does not imply endorsement of them by authors over those not mentioned.

Declaration of Competing Interest

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Economics and Management, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai’an, 271018, China

    Zhaohua Zhang

  2. Agricultural and Biological Engineering Department, Southwest Florida Research and Education Center, University of Florida, IFAS, 2685 SR 29 North, Immokalee, FL, 34142, USA

    Y. Ampatzidis

  3. College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, Northwest A&F University, Yangling, 712100, Shaanxi, China

    L. Fu

  4. Key Lab of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, Ministry of Education of China, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Zhao Zhang

  5. Key Lab of Agriculture Information Acquisition Technology, Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Affairs of China, China Agricultural University, Beijing, 100083, China

    Zhao Zhang

  6. Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota, State University, Fargo, ND, 58102, USA

    Zhao Zhang

Authors
  1. Zhaohua Zhang
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  2. Y. Ampatzidis
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  3. L. Fu
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Zhao Zhang .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Key Lab of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, Ministry of Education, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Zhao Zhang

  2. College of Economics and Management, Shandong Agricultural University, Tai'an, Shandong, China

    Zhaohua Zhang

  3. Department of Agricultural and Biosystems Engineering, North Dakota State University, Fargo, ND, USA

    Cannayen Igathinathane

  4. Chinese Academy of Agricultural Engineering, Beijing, China

    Yingkuan Wang

  5. University of Florida, Immokalee, FL, USA

    Yiannis Ampatzidis

  6. MOE Key Laboratory of Modern Precision Agriculture System Integration Research, China Agricultural University, Beijing, China

    Gang Liu

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Zhang, Z., Ampatzidis, Y., Fu, L., Zhang, Z. (2022). Economic Analysis of an Apple Harvest and Infield Sorting Machine. In: Zhang, Z., Zhang, Z., Igathinathane, C., Wang, Y., Ampatzidis, Y., Liu, G. (eds) Mechanical Harvest of Fresh Market Apples. Smart Agriculture, vol 1. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-16-5316-2_7

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