Harvesting costs form the bottleneck on many manually harvesting farms. In most European countries lowering these costs is imperative. Definite solutions are not yet in sight, but improving harvesting performance is a possibility.
The first step is harvesting with a higher daily frequency. A mushroom increases in weight by nearly 100% in 24 hours. This means that by harvesting an hour later a weight increase of 4% can be achieved. It is of course important that the mushrooms are spread evenly over the beds. It may be necessary to thin out on the first harvesting day, this will give an improved performance for the rest of the week. The art of knowing when to pick and when not to, is vital here. This involves extra effort in instructing the pickers and a certain degree of expertise in cultivation techniques.
Marc Maas, C point
