Plantation Crops

Harvesting, yield and processing in cashew

• Pre flowering age in cashew: 3 to 4 years .
• Full bearing age = 10 to 12 years
• Economic life = over 50 years (35 to 40 years and even upto 60 years).
• Stage of harvesting: Fully mature nuts, Cashewnuts when fully mature look greyish brown.
  Method of harvesting

  a) Collection of fallen nuts: It is better to pick the fallen nuts because there is a possibility of harvesting immature nuts which leads to poor quality kernel during processing.
  b) Periodical plucking of apple : For preparation of cashew apple products one has to pluck the fruits from the tree. If it is fully mature the fruit just drops.

Yield in cashew
10 to 15 kg per raw nuts tree ( Apple yield is 8 to 10 times than that of seed yield )

Processing in cashew nut
Harvested nuts will be dried for 2 to 3 days .
Nuts after drying can be stored in gunny bags well protected from rodents and stacked on a platform above the ground level leaving space on all the sides of the room. Well dried raw nuts (moisture content 8 to 9%) could be stored upto one year without any quality deterioration .
Processing in cashew refers to the recovery of kernel from mature nuts by manual or mechanical means.