Hand Harvesting Blueberries
B.C.’s beautiful, flavourful blueberries are now shipping fresh all over the world. Ensuring the best quality possible for shipping means taking care during harvest and processing to avoid damage. Fumiomi Takeda, a research horticulturalist with the USDA has been studying improved blueberry harvest technologies since 1993 and has found that reducing the drop distance of the berry and other impacts makes for better berries.
“Hand harvest is the best because there is only a small drop into the picking bucket,” Takeda says. “In the case of machine harvesting, if you have a six-foot tall plant, the fruit at the top portion of the bush would be falling more than one meter onto hard catch plates at the bottom of the harvester.”
Through recent research, Takeda found that combining a long fruit drop and landing on a hard surface creates the most fruit bruising and damage. This ultimately leads to shorter shelf life and lack of firmness of the berries.
Additionally, growers should treat berries like they would treat their grandmothers – don’t load them up with too much weight and make sure any travel is as short and comfortable as possible.
“Care must be taken during harvest operation to minimize impact (avoid high drops) and compression (do not put too much fruit into field lugs) and avoid transporting fruit on rough roads or long distances using farm equipment,” Takeda notes.
It isn’t just harvesting that can cause bruising from fruit dropping. Processing equipment that includes drops into hoppers or packaging will also cause higher bruise rated blueberries and a shortened shelf life on fresh fruit.
Drop height, surface firmness, number of drops and harvesting method were all studied and consistently, findings reported that less aggressive methods (hand harvesting, minimal drops, drops onto soft surfaces and fewer drops) led to berries with less bruising. Over-the-row (OTR) harvesters caused more than four times the amount of bruising than hand harvesting where shake and catch harvest methods saw just slightly higher bruising levels. Berries dropped multiple times onto soft surfaces saw less than half the amount of bruising than those dropped the same number of times onto hard surfaces.
In the end, it comes down to treating your berries gently to ensure great fresh fruit for longer periods of time.
