MECHANICAL HARVESTING OF COFFEE IN HIGH SLOPE

Brazilian coffee farming is carried out both on flat and steep lands. In flat areas, mechanized operations are intensive; however, in steep slope areas, certain mechanized operations cannot be performed, such as harvesting. Based on this, the industry has developed machinery to harvest coffee in areas with up to 30% slope. However, harvesters have their efficiency and operational performance influenced by land slope. Thus, this study aimed to evaluate the operational performance and harvesting efficiency of a steep-slope harvester under different situations, using different speed settings. The experiment was carried out in the county of Santo Antonio do Amparo, state of Minas Gerais, Brazil, using five coffee stands with 10, 15, 20, 25 and 30% slope. Evaluations were performed with a self-propelled harvester (Electron, TDI (R), Araguari, MG, Brazil) at three rotation speeds (600, 800 and 1.000 rpm) and two ground speeds (800 and 1.000 m h(-1)). The results showed the lower speed (800 m h(-1)) was suitable for 10% slope areas since the amount of fallen coffee berries. For areas of 20% slope, harvesting time was 21.6% longer than in flatter areas. Downtime varied from 10.66 to 29.18% total harvest due to a higher number of maneuvers.