BLOSSOM THINNING MACHINES

DARWIN – mechanical blossom thinning

Ensure profitable harvests with increased fruit quality and reduced labor bill!

Controlled thinning that you see directly after execution
Thins without chemical use
Increase in fruit size and quality by increasing early sugar allocation to limited number of fruit
Reduces biennial tendencies
Fast travel speed ensures high treated area per hour
Thinning can be performed in all weather conditions
Can be used for all current cultivars

Models

Characteristics

Excellent fruit size and quality achieved by mechanically thinning with Darwin

Mechanical thinning with Darwin is safer and can be more effective than thinning with chemical substances. It’s also quicker and less labor intensive than manual thinning.

The chemicals used to thin pome fruit are costly, and the success of the thinning depends very much upon weather conditions, the ambient temperature and many other unpredictable factors. A second round of chemical thinning is often necessary and is usually followed thereafter by manual thinning. There are currently no reliable chemical thinning techniques used in stone fruit.

With Darwin you can see your thinning results immediately. You can adjust the level of thinning achieved the first time through the orchard to best fit your production goals. The effect of crop rotation is eliminated, which is very difficult when using chemical solutions because of the very early thinning period.

Then again, thinning by hand doesn’t achieve the same fruit quality and it also leads to constant, high costs. In addition, it is increasingly difficult to find suitable workers for this tasks.

While results will vary based on orchard design and operator competence, research done by PSU suggests that when properly thinning with Darwin, there is never a negative return on the investment. The Darwin always works on a profitable basis.

The machine is attached to the front hydraulic system of the tractor or to the coupling mouth by means of an expander, if the tractor does not possess front hydraulic system. The hydraulic adjustment of the spindle inclination allows the adaptation to the tree form or to the ground.

The tractor drives closely along the tree rows with the front-mounted spindle directly in the canopy of the tree, and will indiscriminately remove random buds, flower clusters, or individual blooms – leaving behind your desired amount of flowers to set fruit.

Darwin was developed from practical experience and in its almost 20 years of evolution has constantly been optimized and adapted to our customers’ requirements.

Automated tree-specific blossom thinning

The regulation of the amount of fruit on a plant or tree, that is blossom and/or crop thinning, is one of the most important measures used in intensive commercial fruit growing for achieving the required fruit size and quality in marketing. The greatest challenge for mechanical blossom thinning is the evaluation of the degree of thinning and the optimum adjustment of the spindle speed.

The Darwin SmaArt Camera System replaces the subjective estimation of the blooming strength with the eye with objective detection by camera. To do this, a camera in front of the thinning spindle detects the blossom density of each individual tree and passes on the data to the on-board computer in real time. Using a thinning algorithm, the computer then calculates the optimum spindle speed and controls the thinning unit. The thinning unit consist of a spindle on which six rows of cord bars are arranged that remove the blossom through rotation. The thinning intensity is controlled to a great extent by the spindle speed.

Innovation Award – Agritechnica 2018

As an option, the system can be combined with a GPS receiver. Using the GPS system, it is possible to detect each individual tree and to assign the data, such as the number of blossoms and the spindle speed, to the tree and to compare it later with the yield data.

As a mechanical system, the Darwin SmaArt Camera System for automated blossom thinning can replace chemical or manual blossom thinning.