Summerfruit New Zealand has come up with a simple solution for introducing new fruit pickers to the art of harvesting crops with the just the right color.

Wrist bands for helping trainees pick apricots. Photo: Trish Aitken

The colored, silicone wrist band will be available to growers for the upcoming 2016-17 stonefruit season.

NZ market coordinator Trisha Aitken said the wrist bands will help pickers decide which fruit to pick and which to leave on the tree to grow and ripen further.

"The bands are great for new or inexperienced pickers as they are a constant reminder of the colour fruit they should be looking to pick," Aitken said.

"Growers also found they are really helpful for first or second picks, when there is still a lot of immature fruit on the trees."

The wrist bands are the result of a three-year AGMARDT/Summerfruit NZ-funded project ‘Harvest Assurance Tools’ and follow trialing the bands with apricot, nectarine and peach growers in Hawkes Bay and Central Otago.

"Fruit colour is a major trigger for deciding fruit maturity and therefore deciding when and what to pick. The colours for the wrist bands were chosen following trials which closely matched certain colours with certain varieties. However that doesn’t mean they can’t be used for other varieties too," Ms Aitken said.

The trials found that the wrist bands helped with training new staff and also reduced the amount of time required to supervise pickers.

Aitken said the hard wearing bands are used by advertisers, charities and event organizers as they are comfortable to wear and won’t split, tear or fade. Available in packs of 10, order forms are being sent to growers and can be downloaded from the Summerfruit NZ website.

The company wil also trial cherry and plum-colored wristbands this season with plans for broader introduction in the following harvest.

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