HARVEST PLANNING IN THE CITRUS SECTOR: MATHEMATICAL MODELING AND A REAL CASE

This paper addresses harvest planning in the citrus sector, with an emphasis on orange cultivation. Brazil is the world's largest producer of oranges, leading the international market for orange juice production. Successive reductions in the supply of this crop have highlighted the importance of employing mathematical methods and techniques to overcome these challenges. In this context, the objective of this paper is to develop a mathematical optimization model to aid decision making in orange harvest, determining the quantity of fruit to be harvested in each plot and the ideal timing for this harvest, while satisfying capacity and quality constraints of multiple processing centers. Different test scenarios were evaluated to simulate production situations by varying the processing capacity parameter, using real-life data provided by a company. The results indicated that capacity has a strong influence on the quality of the oranges.