Table Olives: Toward Mechanical Harvesting

Iris Biton,Giora Ben Ari,Yair Mani,Dvora Namdar

doi:10.5772/intechopen.102700

Abstract

The major reasons for developing mechanical technologies for olive harvesting are the chronic shortage of workers for manual harvesting and increasing labor costs. To enable these technologies to operate, new table olive cultivars suitable for mechanical harvesting are necessary. The two major factors required for the shift from manual to mechanical harvesting of table olives are improved harvesting efficiency and prevention of fruit injury. Improved harvesting efficiency requires suitable pretreatment to enable fruit abscission with minimal defoliation, even when the harvesting is performed by a trunk shaker. The second requirement is prevention of external fruit color change or browning as a result of fruit injury, by development of olive cultivars with firm skin and higher resistance to the bruising caused by mechanical harvesting. This genetic adaptation to mechanical harvesting must be accompanied by efficient post-harvest processing of the olives. In this chapter, we will review the published studies regarding mechanical harvest of table olives, and attempt to identify the main issues, which still need to be studied in order to facilitate the transition from hand to mechanical harvest of table olives.

Highlights

Table olives (Olea europaea L.) have been consumed by populations surrounding the Mediterranean basin, as long as 7000 years ago [1]
Investigation of fruit damage conducted on ‘Manzanillo’ table olives in Seville, Spain showed that mechanical harvesting with a trunk shaker led to a rate of bruising 12 times greater than that obtained by manual harvesting
There were no significant differences in the percentage of fruit yield and fruit size as a result of the different pruning treatments. They concluded that the use of mechanical pruning does not decrease average annual yields. These results suggest that in addition to the use of mechanical harvesting, pruning can be done mechanically without lowering the yield of the tree, reducing the management costs of the trees “trained” and adapted for

Summary

Introduction

Table olives (Olea europaea L.) have been consumed by populations surrounding the Mediterranean basin, as long as 7000 years ago [1]. It is interesting to note that despite being one of the oldest domesticated fruit crops in the world [1], table olives have benefitted from few technological innovations, especially in regard to harvesting [12] Because their external appearance and texture are so important in their marketing appeal, special caution must be practiced at harvest. Zipori et al [13] compared the harvesting efficiency and final product quality of four cultivars of green table olive, ‘Manzanillo’, ‘Hojiblanca’, ‘Souri’, and ‘Nabali Mouhassan’, in response to manual versus trunk shaker harvesting. The high sensitivity of table olives to damage caused by mechanical harvesting limits the suitability of this rather efficient method. Investigation of fruit damage conducted on ‘Manzanillo’ table olives in Seville, Spain showed that mechanical harvesting with a trunk shaker led to a rate of bruising 12 times greater than that obtained by manual harvesting. Harvested fruits showed a significantly higher proportion of cutting (18%), a type of damage that may take place during harvesting, and reduced firmness than those harvested manually [18]

The challenge

Findings

Conclusions and further perspectives