Harvesting technologies for sea buckthorn fruit

Sea buckthorn is a multipurpose, hardy, and deciduous shrub, and an ideal plant for soil erosion control, land reclamation, and farmstead protection. Its fruit has high nutritional and medicinal values for humans. However, harvesting of the fruit is very difficult since they are very tightly bunched along the branches. Moreover, the trees have large and needle-sharp thorns hiding all along branches. Therefore, it is very important to study mechanized harvesting technologies to promote the development of sea buckthorn industry. This article mainly presented a comprehensive review of the research status on sea buckthorn fruit harvester, introduced structures and working principles of several typical harvesters, pointed out some problems of harvesting the fruit and recommendations or corresponding suggestions for future research.