Tomato harvesting

Before the making decision of growing tomatoes for sale, the gardeners must consider market which also one of the most important points. Stage of tomato fruits for harvesting depends on the purpose of the production and distance of the markets. The gardeners can harvest tomato fruits at several stages of the fruits. The various stages of the fruits that they are generally harvested are immature-green, breaker, pink, full-ripe and overripe.

If the market is distantly located, harvesting should be done at fully matured green stage. If the market is nearby, the fruits are picked at a more matured breaker stage and onward. The stage of the tomato fruits for harvesting should be decided on the duration required to carry the fruits to the real market. If farmers are growing tomatoes for processing purpose, they should harvest the fruits when they fully ripen. It is done so to optimize quality traits such as color, flavor, texture, acidity and total solids of the tomato fruits.

Most of the fresh market tomato fruits are harvested manually. If any farmer is going to start growing tomatoes for processing purpose, he must start growing tomatoes of the determinate processing type. For this he will use machine harvester. The machine harvesters are widely used in developed countries. These machines shear the tomato bush slightly below the ground. The whole bush is lifted and shaken. And then the fruits are separated from the tomato vine in a conveyer. Thereafter the fruits are delivered to a side trailer. In the machine harvested bulk of the tomato fruits contain most of the fruits at a stage and some fruits are older and some are immature. So grading is done electronically in such case.

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