The assessment of hazelnut mechanical harvesting productivity

Hazelnut cultivation represents a new opportunity for Calabrian mountainous andsloping areas (Southern Italy), where no alternative fruit crops, except forestry, could be settled.In this Region, hazelnut production doubled during the last fifty years, inciting the farmers tointroduce mechanization in cropping practices such as harvesting in order to increase productivityand decrease production costs. Indeed, harvesting is currently one of the most expensiveprocesses of the productive cycle, moreover to be time consuming if carried out manually.Mechanization degree depends significantly on the terrain topography: in sloping areas, rakes areoften associated to aspirating machines to harvest the fallen fruit, while the employment ofharvesting machines from the ground prevails in flat areas. In this context, the present paper aimsto assess technical and economic aspects of harvesting operation, using a harvester from theground model ‘Jolly 2800’ (GF s.r.l., Italy). Particularly, for technical purposes data aboutoperational working time as well as working productivity were collected according to CIOSTArequirements, in two harvesting sites, whereas, for mechanical harvesting economic evaluation,an estimation model was applied to calculate machinery cost per hour. Moreover, the cost per kgof hazelnut in shell and the average cost per hectare were estimated also. The obtained resultsshow a working productivity of 0.065 ha h-1 op-1in the first harvesting site, while it was equal to0.022 ha h-1 op-1in the second one. Concerning the average cost per hectare, the secondharvesting site showed the worst economic performances, with 550.76 € ha-1against182.54 € ha-1 obtained in the first one.