Harvesting of pistachio nuts

Pistachio trees begin bearing the fourth or fifth year after budding. However, a significant crop is not harvested until the seventh or eighth year. At maturity the pistachio hull slips easily off the shell and the color generally turns a pastel shade of crimson. However, some nuts that shaded inside the canopy can be yellow and blank nuts tend to soften in color.

Change in hull color is closely connected with shell slitting and it is important to harvest but when they are fully mature to ensure maximum shell split. There are 7 to 10 days when harvesting can be done without shell-staining occurring.

Pistachios in California are harvested with a shake-catch mechanical harvester and the nuts are placed directly into bins (1.2 by 1.2 by 0.6 m) or trailers.

In some countries and especially for small-scale operations, pistachios are manually knocked or shaken to the ground on tarps, then transferred to bins or other containers for transport to the hulling facilities. A fully mature tree may produce as much as 25 kg of dry, hulled nuts.

Depending upon planting distance and orchard management practices, yields in pistachio orchards could average 2.25 tonnes to 3.35 tonnes per hectare.

Harvesting at optimum maturity, avoiding delays between harvest and hulling, and drying to 4-6% moisture are important factors in insuring good quality of pistachio nuts. The harvested fruit must be hulled and dried within 24 hours to avoid stained shells and aflatoxin contamination.
Harvesting of pistachio nuts

Harvesting of Coffee Beans

Harvesting of Coffee Beans
The harvesting period varies from region to region, coffee tree to coffee tree, because not all of the berries ripen to maturity at the same time.

The harvesting period may take several weeks and demand tremendous labor costs.

There are two systems employed in harvesting – “picking” and “stripping”.

• Picking ensures a perfectly uniform, top quality harvest, as trained pickers expertly select only mature berries – one by one. Pickers of quality coffees must return to the same tree, time after time, to pick more berries as they ripen.

• Tripping is used in some countries where plantations are vast and labor costs are high. This economical, labor saving method is definitely faster; borrower, it results in a harvest of lesser quality beans, since unripe and overripe berries are savagely plucked by machines along with the mature ones. A striped harvest is usually rife with all sorts of impurities, such as leaves, stones and unripe and rotten berries.

Once the berries are harvested, they are transported for the preparation and processing of the beans.
Harvesting of Coffee Beans

Production of Corn (Zea mays L.) in United States

Production of Corn (Zea mays L.) in United States
Corn (Zea mays L.) or maize as it is known in Europe and other parts of the world, originated in the Western hemisphere. Although it is now grown around the world, production of field corn in the United States (270 million tones annually) exceeds that in any other country and is usually about equal to that of the rest of the world put together. Illinois and Iowa lead all other states, but Nebraska, South Dakota, Minnesota, Indiana and Ohio also have substantial crops, and some is grown in every state.

Field corn is entirely different as a food crop from the sweet corn (Zea mays var. rugosa) that is harvested immature in summer and cooked fresh on the cob or cut from the cob in food plants and preserved by canning or freezing for later consumer use as vegetable. Field corn is allowed to mature before harvest in the fall. It is shelled as a part of the harvesting operation and typically requires drying on the farm before storage or delivery to country elevator, grain terminal, or mill.

A very small part of the field corn syrup crop is of white corn varieties, used for the making the hominy grits and white cornmeal sold at retail in the United States, the grits being for use as a vegetable menu item or hot breakfast cereal, and the meal for making white corn bread and muffin. However, since corn is grown primarily for animal feed, for which the yellow varieties are preferred, availability and economics dictate that yellow corn must be the grain of choice for most food ingredient uses, including breakfast cereals.

The corn is dry-milled to separate the germ and bran from the endosperm, the larger particles of which go into the flaking grits, which are then cooked (with other ingredients), dried, tempered, flaked, and toasted. Progressively smaller endosperm particles form corn meal and corn flour, which can be used as ingredients in extruded corn or mixed cereal grain. The bran fraction, for many years used only in animal feed, and the germ press-cake, after extraction of its oil content, are now recovered and made available in an edible grade as a fiber ingredient for cereals and other food products.
Production of Corn (Zea mays L.) in United States