Mechanisation of white asparagus harvest – overview and perspectives

Abstract

Harvesting white asparagus spears is exhausting, and labour- and cost-intensive. Since more than 60 years, growers and manufacturers contemplate to facilitate this process. In this article, the history of mechanisation of white asparagus harvest is described. Three processes can be distinguished, hand harvest supported by different harvesting aids, non-selective harvest, i.e. the whole ridge is cut, and selective harvesters, which are still in development. At the moment, hand harvesting with pushed carriages and hand harvest with one row electric harvesting aids are the predominantly used approaches. The performance of single row harvesting aids can be further improved by shift operation. Two workers use one harvester and harvest twice 4 h per day. In this case, one person can harvest up to 0.8 ha d-1.