driscoll's team has demonstrated its 3 gradney machine for transplanting

Strawberry is one of the crops with high production costs and labor is one of the main expenses in the production of strawberries. And in the nursery, and berry plantations industrial operations require a large amount of hand labor for planting, care for plants, seedlings or harvesting berries. The shortage of skilled agricultural workers is a serious problem. A strawberry industry is now faced with an even more serious problem for summer planting, when help is needed for harvesting berries from last year's autumn planting. The company 'driscoll'sknown as the largest producer of berries in the world, has developed a strawberry transplanter (boarding machine), which is a considerable progress of mechanization in transplanting, one of the two main manual operations in the production of strawberries.

Team 'driscoll's has demonstrated its 3 gradney machine for transplanting for June 20, 2016 at a field of organic strawberries in Santa Maria. Chris Jenkins, product specialist 'driscoll's, came up with the idea and worked with Chris Waldron of PlantelNurseries, and Matt Phillips from the Solex on the development of the first strawberry planting machine. Tim McDonald and Guadalupe Hardwar has also helped in this development. They experimented first with 1-gradney planting machine in February 2016 using seedlings of celery, which replaces the seedlings of strawberries, because they will be available in June. Meanwhile, they have developed 3 gradney boarding the car in the next few months. 10 Jun 'driscoll's planted 10 acres of strawberries using his new 3 gradney boarding the car. A large part of seedlings of type'misted tip ' is grown locally in standard greenhouses in Nipomo.

'driscoll's, Plantel Nurseries and Sodex modified for strawberry transplanter Italian production (Checchi e Magli). "We took the Italian machine used for transplanting of pepper and other crops and modified it for strawberries," said Chris Waldron. "The cost is about $ 46000 for cars, which cover three ridges. With a tractor, shelving, chairs and other equipment, the total cost could be around $ 120 000 for the entire block.

It is assumed, when traditional planting of seedlings with open root system 10 agricultural workers (including rail seedlings, driver forklift, team leader) should work eight hours a day, to plant one acre of strawberries, which usually goes 28000 saplings for the scheme with 4 rows on the ridge. Machine for transplanting may to plant 10 acres a day with a crew of 19 members, which includes the tractor, loader seedlings 12 planters (one for each row of plants, seedlings insert planting holes), and 5 people that control plants on the ridge. PAnshi had 100 people to manually put 10 acres, and now this can be done with just 19 people. "Members team harvest get about $ 30/hour and put them on transplanting with paying about $ 10/hour is not ideal," said Chris Jenkins. "With this machine, we can now to enable the farm workers to better-paying jobs. It's social, ergonomic and cost-effective. As as the transplanting machine does most of the work, it allows the existing workforce focus on cleaning strawberries for fresh market, leads to a higher price than in the case of strawberries for processing. But one thing that I would like to stress that we are not preemptable jobs with the machine. In most cases, nobody wants to do the work of planting, when the cleaning harvest is obviously preferable."

Some of the benefits of the machine for planting seedlings include:

• Effective and uniform planting, which requires less time and human resources.
• The avoidance of human errors, for the depth of planting, twisting roots and other similar issues that occur when hand planting seedlings with an open root system.
• Seedlings "misted tip ' are actively growing and not dormant, as the seedlings with open root system. They are also in an advanced stage of growth compared to last and, most likely, will start producing fruit 2-3 weeks earlier.
• After separation from the mother plants, it takes about 6 weeks for seedlings "misted tip', while for seedlings with open root system required several months to grow in the field and cooling.
• Local production of seedlings "misted tip ' more adapted to the needs of farmers and enables better control of the production of uniform seedlings of good quality, which can easily be delivered without long-distance transportation.
• Seedlings have "misted tip ' the possibility of soil diseases is less in comparison with the seedlings with open root system of the traditional nursery in the field.
• In his research 2015 Chris Jenkins said that the yield of strawberries, planted seedlings "misted tip ' was almost twice the yield in the case of seedlings with open root system. Uniform planting, better health plants and early production of the berries has helped increase yield strawberries from seedlings "misted tip'. Development strawberry planting machine is a significant improvement technology of strawberry production with significant contribution to the solution of problems the shortage of labour.
• Anna Ustymenko,
• Club Sirius Agro Plant