Morphological and productive influence of harvest on coffee plants

Abstract

The harvest of coffee, manual or mechanical, causes damage to the plants in several ways. Such damage manifests negatively in the following harvest, increasing the bienniality of coffee. Therefore, the aim of this work was to evaluate the morphological and productive influence of the use of repeated operations of the harvester and manual harvesting in promoting coffee growth. The biennial production cycle, one of factors that most influence the coffee productivity, is an innate characteristic of the coffee, which refers the annual alternation of high and low fruiting. According to this, the objetive of the study was comparing mechanized crop harvesting with one to six operations of the harvester using a KTR harvester with manual harvesting in initially high-load crops and initially intermediate-load crops. An experimental design of randomized blocks with four replications was utilized. The damage to plants, variation in productivity between the second and the first harvest, leafiness for 270 days and the morphological composition of the branches of the plants were assessed. You can replace manual harvesting with mechanical harvesting using up to two operations of the harvester, regardless of the coffee load, with no increase in the amount of damage caused to plants or reduced productivity in the following harvest. Crops with high initial charge naturally defoliate more than crops with intermediate initial charge. Coffee has a high capacity for defoliation from one season to another irrespective of the defoliation intensity to which it is submitted.