From Local Need to Student Innovation: Pitting Jujubes for Small Farms

In California's Central Valley, jujube farmers faced a practical challenge: efficiently removing the pit from each fruit. Popular among Hmong farming families and other small scale growers who cultivate these hardy trees, jujubes (sometimes called Chinese dates) require tedious hand pitting before they can be used in products. This time consuming process was holding farmers back from expanding their jujube businesses and exploring new recipes.

The challenge became crystal clear at the Central Valley's first ever Jujube Flavor Fest in late 2024. Hosted at a Fresno farmers' market, the festival featured jujube in every form: from sweet jujube punch to spiced jujube bread. While farmers and food artisans shared treats with curious attendees, conversations kept returning to the pitting problem. Each jujube's tough seed has to be removed before the fruit can be used in baking, beverages, or drying. Without expensive industrial equipment, small farms spent hours with knives or improvised tools. The festival highlighted both the fruit's untapped potential and the pressing need for an efficient pitting method.

A Student Team Takes on the Challenge

At UC Merced's Innovate to Grow (I2G) engineering showcase, five mechanical engineering students decided to tackle this agricultural challenge head on. Maria Enciso, Landon Fife, Cody Gong, Fernando Moncayo, and Alexandro (Andrew) Pioquinto formed team "Jujube and the Pits," partnering with UC Agriculture and Natural Resources (UCANR) and the local F3 (Farms, Food, Future) Initiative to develop a solution.

The students discovered that existing industrial pitting machines cost around $30,000, far beyond what small scale growers could afford. This price barrier meant farmers without access to expensive equipment struggled to pit jujubes efficiently, limiting the fruit's market potential.

Building an Affordable Alternative

The team prioritized making their pitter both modular and built from off-the-shelf components. By using common, readily available parts, they could keep costs low and make maintenance or reproduction easier for farmers.

Even running at only 50% of its full speed, the prototype demonstrated impressive results: pitting roughly four jujubes every 10 seconds, or about 24 fruits per minute. This throughput significantly outpaced hand pitting, while the mechanism preserved the fruit's shape and yield, preventing waste or damage to the edible flesh.

Real World Testing and Refinements

Since fresh jujubes were out of season during development, the team plans to fully test and calibrate their pitter once the fruits become available. They've already identified improvements for the next iteration: refining the mechanism for greater reliability and further standardizing parts so the device can be easily assembled by growers or small manufacturers.

"This is way more affordable for small farmers," explained team member Landon Fife. "It will get them in the market, [and] able to introduce this fruit and make it more popular."

Community Partnership Drives Innovation

The project's success stemmed from strong collaboration with community partners. UCANR and F3 Local first brought the jujube pitting problem to the students' attention, providing valuable resources from data on jujube farming to connections with small growers for gathering user requirements and feedback.

The team acknowledged that they "wouldn't have gone as far as [they] did" without this support. By partnering with organizations focused on sustainable agriculture, the students ensured their design aligned with real farming needs and constraints.

Opening New Opportunities

Once fully realized, this affordable pitter will transform how small farmers process their jujube harvest. An accessible pitting solution means growers can bring their fruit to market at a larger scale, potentially introducing more consumers to jujubes and raising the fruit's profile.

The project exemplifies how student ingenuity can solve real world agricultural problems. As the team continues refining their design, they're moving closer to making jujube farming more viable, demonstrating how engineering solutions can grow from the classroom to the field, improving livelihoods one innovation at a time.