A low-damage electric harvesting system for lodging-prone Cerasus humilis: design, optimization and field validation

Mechanized harvesting remains a major bottleneck for sustainable Cerasus humilis production because lodging-prone branches and fragile fruit make conventional small-fruit harvesters difficult to adapt. To address this crop-specific constraint, we developed a low-damage self-propelled electric harvesting system that integrates branch lifting, comb-type stripping, screw conveying, self-propelled travel and electrohydraulic height adjustment. The key working modules were analyzed, and a four-factor, three-level Box-Behnken field experiment was used to optimize travel speed and the rotational speeds of the branch-lifter, stripping and conveying motors. Travel speed had the strongest effect on harvesting rate, whereas stripping speed had the strongest effect on fruit damage. The optimized operating settings were a travel speed of 0.2 m/s, a branch-lifter speed of 104.6 r/min, a stripping motor speed of 22 r/min and a conveying motor speed of 137.4 r/min. Five validation tests under these settings achieved a mean harvesting rate of 82.12% and a mean damage rate of 2.79%, compared with predicted values of 81.26% and 2.80%, respectively. These results indicate that coordinated electric control of branch lifting, comb-type stripping and fruit conveying enables sustainable low-damage field harvesting of C. humilis under the tested cultivar and site conditions.