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Comparison and Evaluation of Apple Harvesting Process Under Different Harvest Methods

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Mechanical Harvest of Fresh Market Apples

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

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Abstract

Due to decreased availability of seasonal labor and increased labor cost for apple harvest, it is necessary to explore a new harvest method to replace the conventional ladder-and-bucket approach. As ladder use is one of the main reasons which cause low efficiency of the ladder-and-bucket approach, harvest platforms have been commercialized and adopted by pioneer orchard growers to avoid the use of ladder. However, the adoption process is slow because apple growers are doubtable about the efficiency improvement brought by harvest platforms. It is, therefore, necessary to compare harvest efficiencies between the ladder-and-bucket method and harvest platforms, as well as finding potential directions for further efficiency improvement. This study first recorded videos of workers’ harvesting process under different methods—ladder-and-bucket, DBR, and Huron, and then divided and categorized the continuous harvesting process into different activities for analysis. Experimental results demonstrated picking time percentages (PTPs) of 64%, 78%, and 83% for the ladder-and-bucket, DBR, and Huron, respectively. The picking activity was further evaluated in terms of approaching, detaching, and transporting apples. The results showed that detachment time percentage (DTP) was 32%, 30%, and 31%, respectively, for the three methods. Overall efficiency (OE) and overall time index (OTI) were introduced to further compare the three methods more holistically. The OEs for the three methods were 21%, 23%, and 26%, respectively, and OTIs were 45%, 71%, and 80%, respectively. Using OE as a reference, the DBR and Huron achieved an increase of 10% and 24% over the ladder-and-bucket, respectively, and an increase of 58 and 78% when using OTI as a reference. Compared to the high values of PTPs (64–83%) with limited scope for improvement, the low values of detachment time percentage (1/3 of picking time) for all three methods indicated a clear potential for improvement. Future research efforts should be directed to the investigation and improvement of the overall harvesting process, apple picking component activities (detachment and transport), reducing hand activities, and automated harvesting methods through innovative design and development.

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Credit Authorship Contribution Statement

Z. Zhang: Writing—original draft. 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.

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Authors and Affiliations

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

    Zhaohua Zhang

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

    Zhao Zhang

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

    Zhao Zhang

  4. 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. Zhao Zhang
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Correspondence to Zhao Zhang .

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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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© 2022 The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd.

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Zhang, Z., Zhang, Z. (2022). Comparison and Evaluation of Apple Harvesting Process Under Different Harvest Methods. 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_8

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