Issue link: http://read.dmtmag.com/i/76198
Vince Bryan says the PickerTech mobile harvest system is not designed just for fruiting walls. It has been tested successfully in this 6- by 12- foot planting at Cave B in George, Washington. Each of the machines has patented components—which include the transport tubes and the dry bin filler, in the case of PickerTech. By combining their efforts and incor- porating the best aspects of each system, an improved harvester might more easily be developed. Bryan sees his harvesting system as a core technology that might incorporate other technologies in the future as they are developed, rather than become obsolete. Bryan said it would not surprise him if, in 20 years, the machine has four robotic arms in place of the four pickers, but robotics experts will develop that technology. In the meantime, the harvesting system can help increase productivity by making human pickers more productive. "You have to make the decision that it has to be done and it has to be done now," he said. "What we've tried to do is give you a tool that makes a big jump in your productivity. Now, you have to do it." Mechanized Bryan said the urgency comes not just from the poten- tial labor crisis in the Northwest, but the fact that other apple-producing countries around the world are already becoming more mechanized. He recently visited a large grower in Germany who was using a less sophisticated European harvest machine and was looking to upgrade to a more efficient system. "I could sell the machine in Australia, and Europe, and Chile right now," he said. However, PickerTech's agree- ment with Oxbo stipulates that the harvesting system will be released first in North America. By PickerTech's calculations, buying or leasing a har- vester would make economic sense for a grower with 80 acres of orchard as long as it is diversified so that harvest stretches over eight to ten weeks. If the trees form a fruit- ing wall, so much the better, but the flexible tubes into which the workers put the fruit allow them to walk around and harvest from the bigger trees in low-density orchards also. Bryan said when PickerTech began work- ing on the project, it knew that the system had to be able to improve productivity in plantings of different ages and systems, because the typical orchard has both. Since every orchard is different, PickerTechnologies has created economic models where growers can input their own data to calculate the return on investment. To get the most out of the system, growers will have to train their workers to use the machine and operate it for two shifts a day seven days a week. They might want to share a machine with a neighbor. The harvester can be used to pick other types of fruits, such as peaches and pears, because the patented tubes can accommodate objects of various sizes and shapes. In fact, with the fruit harvester complete, Bryan is now focusing on developing fish passage and handling sys- tems using the same tube design, and is renaming the company Whoosh Innovations. For more information, go to www.whooshh.com. • 16 AUGUST 2012 GOOD FRUIT GROWER www.goodfruit.com photo by geraldine warner