Apple production for mechanised harvesting on the Lincoln canopy system

Abstract

The shrinking and increasingly expensive rural labour force will not equate with the continuing steady rise in our apple tree numbers. The time has undoubtedly come to consider some formof mechanised help. Yet attempts to harvest apples by machine, mainly in the USA, have never been successful. Shake and catch methods have received most attention but the machines developed have been large and costly and both fruit and trees without exception have suffered unacceptable levels of damage.