Asa Lift 6 row top lifter carrot harvester

A Carrot Harvester is an agricultural machine for

harvesting Harvesting is the process of gathering a ripe crop from the fields. Reaping is the cutting of grain or pulse for harvest, typically using a scythe, sickle, or reaper. On smaller farms with minimal mechanization, harvesting is the most labor-i ...

carrot The carrot ('' Daucus carota'' subsp. ''sativus'') is a root vegetable, typically orange in color, though purple, black, red, white, and yellow cultivars exist, all of which are domesticated forms of the wild carrot, ''Daucus carota'', nat ...

s. Carrot harvesters are either top lifters or share lifters and may be

tractor A tractor is an engineering vehicle specifically designed to deliver a high tractive effort (or torque) at slow speeds, for the purposes of hauling a trailer or machinery such as that used in agriculture, mining or construction. Most common ...

mounted, trailed behind a tractor or self-propelled. The machine typically harvests between one and six rows of carrots at once.

Operation

The two types of harvesters differ in how they get the carrots from the ground.

Top lifting harvesters

Top lifters use

rubber Rubber, also called India rubber, latex, Amazonian rubber, ''caucho'', or ''caoutchouc'', as initially produced, consists of polymers of the organic compound isoprene, with minor impurities of other organic compounds. Thailand, Malaysia, and ...

belts to grab the green tops of the carrot plant and pull them from the

soil Soil, also commonly referred to as earth or dirt, is a mixture of organic matter, minerals, gases, liquids, and organisms that together support life. Some scientific definitions distinguish ''dirt'' from ''soil'' by restricting the former te ...

. A share pushes under the carrot root and loosens the plant. The belt takes the carrots, with tops, in to the machine where the tops are cut off and sent along a waste path and dropped back on to the field.

Share lifting harvesters

A share lifter uses a share to get the carrots out of the ground from underneath. The machine must be preceded by a topper to cut the green tops off the carrot plants. The carrots travel along a longer web to separate out the soil.

Cleaning and collection

The carrot roots travel along one or more webs to remove most of the soil attached to the carrot. The carrots are collected either in a storage tank on the machine (called a "Bunker") or in a trailer pulled alongside the machine by another tractor.

References

External links

Agricultural machinery Harvesters Carrot {{Agri-stub