Cocoa Plants Harvest and Post Harvest

Harvest and post harvest
How to harvest:

• To harvest the cocoa using a sharp knife.
• When the location of high cocoa pods, connected with a bamboo knife.
• The way not to injure the stem grapes are grown fruit (fruit bearing)
• Harvesting is done only by cutting the fruit stalk right in the trunk or branches of an overgrown fruit, this order does not prevent flowering in the next period.
• Harvesting is under the supervision of the foreman, the foreman overseeing every 20 people per day.
• A cacao fruit picker can pick as many as 1500 pieces per day.
• Ripe fruit is harvested with a high density system with 6 / 7 means the fruit picked in 7 days 6 days. If the low density of ripe fruit, harvested with a system of 7 / 14.

Post Harvest
Collection.
Fruit that has been harvested is usually collected at a specific place and class are grouped according to ripeness. Skin breakdown implemented using a hard round wood.
Fermentation :

• Is the core processing of cocoa beans, namely the process of formation of candidates for the taste, bitter taste reduction and improved physical appearance of seeds.
• Fermentation container can be either a box or basket beraerasi.
• During the fermentation of grain stacks covered in banana leaves or burlap sacks.
• Pile of seeds in the minimum height is 40 cm box.
• Avoid contact with metal.
• Fermentation produces seeds that are less precise slaty
• Long fermentation 5-7 days for cocoa lindak, and 3-4 days for noble cocoa, with a reversal once after 48 hours.

Signs of adequate or finished fermentation:

• Seed seemed a little dry (moist)
• Brown and smelling vinegar acid
• Mucus easily removable
• When cut in cross-sectional seeds look like rings of brown.

Drying

• After it is dried until its water content 6-7%.
• Drying can be by the sun or dryer or a combination of both.

Packaging and Storage

• Dried cocoa seeds can be put into burlap sacks.
• Each burlap filled with 60 kg of dry cocoa beans, then the sacks containing the dried seeds are stored in the warehouse is clean, dry and berfentilasi good.

Storage in warehouses should be no more than 6 months and every 3 months should be examined to see whether there is mold or pests that attack cocoa bean warehouse.

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