What makes difficult the collection is the fact that the plantations are located, for the most part, on steep slopes and mountainous areas because the coffee plant needs at high altitudes.
There are two methods of manual picking :
Stripping :
fast but inaccurate method where the cherries are torn all along the branch. A later stage will then need to separate the ripe fruits from those immaturewhich is carried out manually, if the cost of labor is not very high, or by immersing the cherries in a tank full of water waterline: ripe ones go to the bottom to be machined and the unripe remain afloat.
Picking
slower and more expensive method , but which allows to obtain a crop of higher quality and more homogeneous, in fact is used for coffee finest high quality are only the ripe drupes harvested, leaving the other on the branches for the next collection.
