A Study on the Determination of Mechanic Harvest Properties of Some Sweet Cherry Varieties

Cherry is a hand-harvested fruit due to various difficulties and constraints. This condition results in the use of labor at a high rate. Turkey's annual cherry production is at the level of 724 thousand tons. Various tools or machines that have been developed for cherry harvest have the potential to contribute greatly to the production in this area. The share of the labor required for harvesting in cherry production in the total labor requirement is around 70%. In this research, it was aimed to collect the necessary data to mechanize the cherry harvest by determining the physico-mechanical properties of cherry fruit. As a result of the present study, several physical, biological, and mechanical properties of four sweet cherry variety (0900 Ziraat, Starks Gold, Merton Late, Lambert) were determined and compared in terms of fruit mass, net fruit weight, tensile force, weight, thickness, length, width, sphericity, surface area, volume of fruit, and also weight, width, length, sphericity of seed, tensile force of stalk, stalk length, and weight. Tensile force of fruit, tensile force of stalk and weight of the fruit of 0900 Ziraat variety were found 2.579 N, 7.041 N, 9.592 g, respectively. After the evaluation of the obtained data, it was determined that all four cherry varieties examined were suitable for mechanical harvesting. However, the most suitable variety for mechanical harvesting was found as ‘0900 Ziraat’.