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2015 Spring Meeting Florida Blueberry Growers’ Association
CURRENT USDA BLUEBERRY RESEARCH:
* SEASONAL SHADING OF BLUEBERRY PLANTS
* MECHANICAL AND HARVEST-AID SYSTEMS FOR FRESH-
MARKET PACK-OUT BLUEBRRY
* BLUEBERRY PACKING LINE EVALUATION
Fumiomi Takeda
USDA-ARS Appalachian Fruit Research Station
Kearneysville, WV 25430

Seasonal, Retractable Shading System for Blueberries in the Southeast
• Cooler plant temperature/ Substitute for HC ?
• Advance bloom, Improve fruit set
• Reduce frost damage, Bird predation ?
• Increase U-Pick customer satisfaction
Bartow, FL
Feb. 2013

Scale-Neutral Harvest-Aid System and Sensor
Technologies to Improve Harvest Efficiency and
Handling of Fresh-Market Highbush Blueberries
Project Overview
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

USDA NIFA competitive grant: Specialty Crop Research Initiative ($2.37 million)
14 PIs from 10 LAND-GRANT UNIVERSITIES and USDA-ARS
Multi-state, comprehensive 4-year research/ extension project to develop semimechanical harvesters and sensor technologies to take fresh market blueberry production to next level
3

Objectives
1.
Develop high-throughput phenotyping, sensor technologies
2. Design a new semi-mechanical harvest-aid system for efficient mechanical fruit harvesting for small- and medium-size blueberry farms and with fruit quality for fresh-market packout
3. Develop the next-generation berry impact recording sensor and use it to improve harvest and postharvest operations through a critical understanding of mechanical impacts
4

Objectives
4. Determine microbial contamination and critical control points along the harvest and postharvest chain with the new harvesting system
5. Conduct economic and ergonomic analyses of new developed harvesting technologies
6. Outreach and technology transfer

HAND-HARVESTED MACHINE-HARVESTED

Fruit dropped from heights > 2 feet

Internal bruise detection using near infrared imaging system
Bruised
Band ratio near infrared images
(1075/1250 nm) of bruised blueberries (top row) and healthy blueberries (bottom row);
• A SWRI hyperspectral imaging system will be used
• PCA and minimum noise fraction transform will be used to enhance features
• Band ratio images will be used to enhance bruising feature
• Linear Bayesian classifier for classification
9/27

Thermal imaging
Bruised
Thermal image of one bruised
(right) and one healthy (left) blueberries (Li, Unpublished work).
• Pulsed-phase thermography
• Thermal camera (T440, FLIR) 320 x 240
• 10 s heat excitation
• Frequency, amplitude, and phase delay will be analyzed by fast
Fourier transform using Matlab
• Artificial bruising (pendulum); 24h and 48h after bruising
10/27

PACKING HOUSE EVALUATION

Y
3 Accelerometers
12/27

BIRD II

CUMULATIVE DROP HEIGHT = ~ 40 in.

*
ELECTRONIC
SORTER
SIZER
Grading Line
*
*
*

Fruit dropped once from 24-inch height onto padded surface

Fruit dropped 5 times from 6-inch height to hard surface

• Design a new semi-mechanical harvest-aid system for efficient mechanical fruit harvesting for small- and medium-size blueberry farms.
Goal: Machine harvest blueberries without bruising them!
18/27

Alternative Harvester Design: Reduce how far berries drop
1. Plant canopy manipulation; 2) Positioning of catcher plates

Catcher plate design
600
400
200
0
0
1000
800
Padded catcher plate
Various padding products are being evaluated
Plastic r
2
=0.99
No Bruze r
2
=0.99
20 40 60 80
Drop height (cm)
100 120
(a)
?
140

Putting all the components together:

Multi-Row Harvesting Platform?
 Improved fruit removal apparatus
 Catcher plates that minimize fruit bruising
 Ergonomic
 Higher capacity platform harvesting system

Thank you!
Questions?