It is essential to examine stored fruit at regular intervals to check quality and internal condition. Representative samples need to be taken at harvest and placed in a bin under the store hatch.
- As fruit from each orchard is loaded into the store one sample should be taken for every proposed month of storage after October.
- It is important to ensure that samples are representative of the whole orchard and that there are sufficient samples to provide monthly monitoring of every orchard.
- Twenty apples are required per orchard per month. To obtain the samples for monitoring, one apple should be taken from every tenth bin from that orchard as it is being loaded into the store.
- If less than 200 bins from an orchard are going into the store then fruit should be taken more frequently e.g. sample every bin from a 20-bin consignment.
- The 20 fruits should be placed in a string net and labelled with orchard name, picking date and store number.
- This procedure should be repeated for each proposed month of storage after October, by taking apples from the same bins.
- The samples should be placed in a bin under the hatch and covered with a layer of fruit.
- If a second orchard is to be loaded into the store, fruit from another set of samples should be taken.
- Similarly, if fruit from a particular orchard is loaded into several stores then further sets of samples should be taken.