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Advice on Publications Available.Coffee is not strictly a new crop in Australia as a viable coffee industry existed in the 1890s and 1920s with production at centres spread over 1500 km of the eastern Queensland coastline and extending into northern New South Wales. However, high labo ur costs and competition from the developing sugar industry led to the demise of the industry.
In the late 1970s, commercial interest was revived following high coffee prices and the development of the first mechanical harvesters in Brazil. Today, Australia imports about 41,000 tonnes of coffee valued at about $350 million. Local production is l imited to about three hundred tonnes but there is considerable commercial interest in expanding production and tree plantings have accelerated rapidly during the past decade.
The Australian coffee industry is mainly concentrated in two areas. One is on the Atherton Tablelands in North Queensland where the industry is based on machine harvesting. The other is in the Northern Rivers region of NSW where about 70 small boutique coffee orchards have been established since 1990.
This article briefly describes the development of the coffee harvester in Queensland which has been the catalyst to large-scale commercial production on the Atherton Tablelands.
The first efforts to mechanise coffee harvesting were undertaken in Hawaii in the 1960s, using limb-shaking techniques. These techniques gave a reasonable level of ripe fruit recovery but the harvest included a high level of immature cherry. The first successful mechanical harvester was developed in Brazil in the late 1970s. This was a large "over-the-row" harvester designed to harvest predominantly ripe and tree-dried cherry in a one-pass non-selective operation. The design of this machine was largely based on that used in the berry harvesters which had earlier been developed in Europe and North America.
In Australia, the first mechanical coffee harvester, a modified New Zealand PEKO berry harvester, was imported in 1982. In 1984, an FMC-COCO coffee harvester was imported from Brazil.
Problems were experienced with the durability and performance of the PEKO machine and it was redeveloped to incorporate shakers of a modified Brazilian design.
This shaker design was then used as the basis for the "Coffee Shuttle 1" developed by North Queensland Engineers and Agents (NQEA) at Cairns. It was also the basis for a large harvester built for the "Skyberry" plantation at Mareeba and an experimental "skeleton" harvester built for the QDPI's research program.
As a result of the QDPI research program, a self-propelled coffee harvester was subsequently developed which was a radical departure from previous coffee harvesters and incorporated major changes to the shaker system and overall machine layout.
This machine is capable of operating up to three times faster than the traditional models, does less damage to the tree and is much more selective in harvesting mature cherries. Manufacture of this machine has been licensed to Austoft in Bundaberg, a m ajor manufacturer of sugarcane harvesting equipment.
It was estimated in Brazil that the early large straddle machines could replace 60-80 men and operate with 80-85% efficiency early in the season and 95-100% late in the season. The latest Austoft machines are even more effective and efficient than the early Brazilian machines.
In Brazil, the Austoft units are operated continuously and can average six tonnes per hour of cherry, equivalent to one tonne per hour of final product. In developing countries, where cherries are handpicked, harvesting costs represent about 50% of the cost of production. With machine harvesting, the harvesting cost is only about 10% of production costs.
A feature of the Australian work on the mechanisation of coffee harvesting has been the close integration of agronomic and engineering studies.
Efficient mechanical harvesting requires the development of plant types and cultural practices that facilitate mechanical harvesting.
Many plant and cultural factors impact on the efficiency of machine harvesting. These include the plant habit, with tall plants being easier to harvest and semi-dwarf plants giving the highest yields.
Other factors include plant spacings, controlled irrigation to manipulate synchrony of flowering and application of nitrogen fertiliser in mid-season to improve leaf retention during machine harvesting.
The Australian coffee industry originally sought to develop a "one-pass" harvesting strategy. However, even with complete synchrony of flowering there can be a difference of up to ten weeks in the time to maturity between cherries at the top of the bus h and those on the lower parts.
On average, the cherries at the top of the bush are ready for harvesting about three weeks before those on the bottom of the bush. This has lead to the development of a "layer harvesting" technique where the top, then the top plus middle, and finally t he middle and bottom of the bush are harvested. This approach allows the grower to obtain both maximum yields and maximum quality of coffee.
The development of an efficient coffee harvester has made possible the very viable commercial coffee industry centred on the Atherton Tablelands and Australia is now recognised as a leader in the technology of mechanical harvesting.
Currently, four or five farmers are growing about 300ha of coffee on the Atherton Tablelands and are producing about 300 tonnes of dry beans valued at over A$2 million.
A feature of the coffee production from this area is that the bulk of the crop is being sold to international gourmet markets at a substantial premium over the average world price.
This premium is being obtained because the technology of harvesting and processing enables a fault-free product to be produced. This technology is readily applicable to the NSW coffee industry and can also be expected to produce a gourmet market produc t.
It can be predicted that the future will see further developments in harvester design, improvements in the adaptation of coffee cultivars to machine harvesting and improvements in cultural practices.
It seems likely that coffee will be the next major crop to be mechanised around the world and the mechanisation can be expected to be based on Australian technology.
Any claims made by authors in the Australian New Crops Newsletter are presented by the Editors in good faith. Readers would be wise to critically examine the circumstances associated with any claims to determine the applicability of such claims to their specific set of circumstances. This material can be reproduced, with the provision that the source and the author (or editors, if applicable) are acknowledged and the use is for information or educational purposes. Contact with the original author is probably wise since the material may require updating or amendment if used in other publications. Material sourced from the Australian New Crops Newsletter cannot be used out of context or for commercial purposes not related to its original purpose in the newsletter
Contact: Dr Rob Fletcher, School of Land and Food, The University of Queensland Gatton College, 4345; Telephone: 07 5460 1311 or 07 5460 1301; Facsimile: 07 5460 1112; International facsimile: 61 7 5460 1112; Email:
r.fletcher@mailbox.uq.edu.au[
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GK; latest update 6 June 1999 by: RF