Román Aponte, Elvin Antonio

Publication Search Results

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1

Evaluación de métodos alternativos de cosecha de café para Puerto Rico
(2023-05-11) Román Aponte, Elvin Antonio; Monroig Saltar, Francisco M.; College of Agricultural Sciences; Flores Ortega, Carlos; Monroig Inglés, Miguel F.; Department of Crops and Agro-Environmental Sciences; Huertas Miranda, Javier A.
An evaluation of commercially available alternative methods for coffee harvesting was performed. The treatments evaluated were the Brudden DSC-18 selective coffee shaker, manual harvesting with short nets and the traditional basket as a control treatment. The study considered parameters such as harvesting capacity, efficiency, uncollected fruits, and harvested coffee quality, among others. The results show that the selective coffee shaker had a harvesting capacity of 26.91 kg/h significantly higher than the other methods. However, it was the least efficient at removing ripe fruit from the trees and the one that harvested the greatest amount of unripe fruit (25.38 %). The traditional basket allowed harvesting coffee with less vegetative material, however, 11.36 % of the ripe coffee fell to the ground. The short nets obtained comparable results to the traditional basket. Although the methods studied have the potential to be adopted, the preference of the workers was for the traditional basket.