Abstract
Hops for beer production are a crop of growing interest in Italy, requiring specialized harvesting equipment and infrastructure. Several studies have been conducted on hop cultivation and harvesting around the world, but information on Italian hop production is still very scarce. As it turns out, only a few Italian farms are self-sufficient, employing a mechanical harvesting system, while most of them resort to hand-picking. In this study, hand and mechanical hop-picking were investigated, highlighting the longest time necessary for the manual cut (65 ± 5 min for approximately 2 kg of fresh cones). Furthermore, different mechanical solutions for hop harvesting were evaluated; in particular, one hop-picking machine was tested at different settings (full speed and 75% of chain feed). At full speed, it was possible to collect an average of around 96 kg h−1 of fresh cones, while approximately 13% of cones were left unpicked. A speed reduction of approximately 25% made it possible to reduce the cone loss to 8%, with a cone collection of around 86 kg h−1. Lost and picked cones, however, were strongly related to the number of side-arms growing from the main bines. This experience made it possible to test an old solution for this emerging crop at moderate cost and with good sustainability for the Italian territory.
Highlights
Over the past few decades, Italy has witnessed the rise and establishment of a new type of business in the brewing industry, the craft beer industry, which has gained great success and credibility, becoming one of the most significant phenomena in the Italian agro-food sector
The present study reports on a preliminary assessment of the mechanization of hop cultivation in Italy
Experimental tests conducted on imported hop-picking machines showed their adaptability to the Italian hop situation, and a fair efficiency of the tested machine settings, with slightly higher loss from the values indicated from the manufacturer; with 140 main bines, the values of the losses caused by the undetached cones still remain above 7%, an acceptable value for the hop producer
Summary
Over the past few decades, Italy has witnessed the rise and establishment of a new type of business in the brewing industry, the craft beer industry, which has gained great success and credibility, becoming one of the most significant phenomena in the Italian agro-food sector. To meet the increasing demand from microbreweries, small-scale farms in Italy are trying to harvest their own cultivated hops, either by hand or with the use of hop-picking machines which are not yet optimized, requiring long working times which often lead to a poor-quality product. Some models are available which adapt various techniques to farms, in order to optimize the collection/transformation process [29] In light of these considerations, the present study mainly aimed at assessing the workload and environment and power requirements of the main harvesting systems which are currently used for hop-harvesting in Italy, considering the fact that this crop is not yet well established. In the first part of the study, hand and mechanical hop-picking were compared, whereas the second part compared mechanical hop-picking at full speed and 75% speed
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