Blueberry harvest is now underway in several producing states. Mechanical harvesting of blueberries—and other types of specialty crops—is not new, as Oregon State University Extension’s Yei Wang explains.

“They have been mechanically harvesting blueberries since the late 1960s–70s, really, but the most significant one came about 35 years ago in Michigan.”

A state with a history of highbush blueberry production. That harvester focused on picking blueberries for processing.

“It has been that way for a long time because the cost of labor going up with ability of labor.”

Leading fresh blueberry producers to use a harvester designed only for fruit going to the process market and finding harvest not to their liking.

“Because there are lots of damages to the fruits.”

Due to internal bruising, creating a mushy fresh blueberry. So Wang and colleagues from several land-grant universities in fresh blueberry growing states, along with blueberry industry representation, joined forces in recent years, conducting R&D on a mechanical harvester for produce intended for the fresh market. Among research developments:

“Soft catch systems were actually reduced bruising while we harvest in the berries, so we can have a better quality.”

And further study into improved fresh blueberry mechanical harvesters involves incorporation of artificial intelligence.

“You can make the machine smarter, and also you can have the machine making decisions for how to harvest the particular fields—from predicting yield to predicting how the machines is going to set up, to what’s the necessary steps to keep that machine-harvested fruits fresh along the cold chain. All those things, I think, will have an important impact on the quality of fruits going to retail in the future.”

Wang adds that future AI incorporation into mechanical harvesters could create one of several pieces of autonomous equipment performing diverse functions, such as precision spraying of nutrients and pesticides in addition to harvest.