Abstract :
Harvesting of the potato crop is a critical part of the entire potato production and marketing operation. Therefore, potato harvesting is the most important activity which affects crop yield, tuber quality, marketing quality and storage ability. In potato production, crop yield and quality cannot be increased during harvest, but unsuitable and careless applications can be decreased product quality, tuber yield and economic value, sometimes drastically. Harvesting process should be facilitated in the kinds of potato production: in both seed tuber and marketing tuber production, also in both harvesting by hand and harvesting by potato harvester. Potato harvester should not be extremely loaded during harvesting, otherwise the bruising and damage of tubers will increase. For this reason, the soil ridges should be dry and sieve propriety, the vines of potato should be removed or killed, the components of the potato harvester and it’s the constructive properties, and the ground speed of tractor should be suitable. These conditions will provide harvesting the tubers without damage or minimizing tuber damage. In this work, the effect of potato harvesters on tuber bruising and damages was investigated. The components of the potato harvester which affect tuber bruising and damage was considered and investigated one by one, information on possible tuber bruising and damages in the each component of the potato harvester during harvesting was given.
