Abstract
Many types of specialized machinery for harvesting short rotation woody crops (SRWC) exist, including small and large single-pass cut-and-chip systems, whole stem harvesters, and baling systems. However, due to the limited scale of SRWC deployment, evolving technology, different operational scales, and management objectives, there is presently no dominant harvesting system in use. In New York State, several existing or modified harvesting platforms for SRWC from Europe and North America have been evaluated since 2001 for use in short rotation willow. Technical hurdles encountered on various harvesters that were tested during that time include the durability of equipment, low production rates, irregular feeding of stems into the harvester, limits on maximum stem sizes, and inconsistent size and quality of chips.