14 BULLETIN 331, U. S. DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE. 



COMMERCIAL HANDLING METHODS. 



The methods of harvesting prunes for fresh-fruit shipment are 

 necessarily very different from those employed where the product is 

 to be evaporated. In the latter case the prunes are allowed to fall 

 on the ground or the trees are shaken periodically by pickers who go 

 through the orchard with poles, especially for this purpose. As a 

 rule, a great many pickings are made during the season. The prod- 

 uct is afterwards picked up from the ground and hauled to the evap- 

 orators for grading and processing. The operations for harvesting 

 prunes for shipment in a fresh state are very similar to those 

 described for cherries. In picking, the prunes are grasped by the 

 pedicel and placed in buckets or pails of various makes and sizes. 

 From these they are poured into lug boxes, usually slatted and hold- 

 ing from 30 to 35 pounds. Sometimes the packing is done at the 

 orchard or on the farm, but more often the prunes are hauled to a 

 central packing house at the nearest shipping point. In the packing 

 house the prunes are poured out on a sorting and packing table, the 

 packers doing both the grading and packing. The package used is 

 a 4-basket crate holding approximately 25 pounds of fruit. The 

 sizes are designated as 4 by 5, 5 by 5, 5 by 6, and 6 by 6, the majority 

 usually running about 5 by 5 and 5 by 6, and are based on the num- 

 ber of prunes in a row each way in the basket. One thousand crates 

 constitute the usual standard carload of prunes, although the load 

 may vary somewhat one way or the other. 1 



PURPOSE AND OUTLINE OF INVESTIGATIONS. 



As previously indicated, fresh-prune shipments have not yielded 

 uniformly satisfactory returns, largely on account of the poor con- 

 dition in which the prunes arrived on the market. These investiga- 

 tions, therefore, were inaugurated with a view to determining 

 whether prunes grown in the Willamette Valley and in sections 

 having similar climatic conditions can be handled with sufficient 

 care to deliver them on the market in good, sound condition. Dur- 

 ing the season of 1911 quite a number of commercial car-lot ship- 

 ments of fresh prunes were made, and the investigations that season 

 were planned primarily to determine the relationship of handling 

 methods, of delayed cooling and shipping, and of quick cooling or 

 precooling to the decay and deterioration of fresh prunes in transit 

 and on the market. 



It was impracticable to make any experimental shipments to 

 eastern markets, on account of the impossibility of securing a suffi- 

 cient number of cars for one market, and the experimental lots were 



1 Lewis, C. I., Brown, F. R., and Bradford, F. C. A prune survey of Oregon. In Oreg. 

 Agr. Exp. Sta., Bien. Crop Pest and Hort. Rpt, 1911-12, p. 8-30, 8 fig., 1913. 



