Mechanizing Harvest

Those of you that remember the cartoon The Jetsons also remember all the crazy machines that did basically everything for George and Jane. The ag industry has been working to develop some of those same machines to help pick their fruit. Todd Deligan with Whoosh Innovations talks about what orchardists are looking for.

DELIGAN: They want almost a full production plant out in the field. They want a mobile fruit harvester. Our technology is centered around the transport from A to B. The industry, I think, wanted A to B transport from where the picker was picking, you know placing that piece of fruit right into the tube and heading off to the mobile harvester but that harvester is a very complicated thing. It slows fruit down. It scans fruit. It culls out fruit and then it places fruit in bins; pick up bins automatically, places bins down automatically. It is almost a packing house out in the field.

But Deligan says that is a very big project with a lot going on. Lately the company has stepped back from ag mechanization to focus on using the transport part of their operation for moving fish but says that once that technology has been established and proven they want to move back to the ag side again.

DELIGAN: We want the resource managers to use our system as a tool for the effective movement of fish. And then number two on the commercial side; if we can help seafood processors within their plant move product delicately and efficiently around plants, more effectively, again another great goal. It's really the efficient movement within the processing plants, within vessels, on farm sites, ponds and other types of things.

That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Ag Information Network.