I am completing a Bachelor of Engineering with Honours at the University of Waikato and am currently doing my final year research project. My field of study is Assisted Harvesting in the Strawberry industry with the focus on the human factors aspect of strawberry harvesting. As part of my research, I would like to establish what health and safety issues the strawberry industry is dealing with. Much of the online data I have found so far is quite broad by industry and I think most strawberry issues would be reported under Agriculture? I think some strawberry related injuries may be filed under transport or warehousing in some instances. What I would ideally like to write about is injuries in the sub-category of Horticulture, the sub-category of strawberry harvesting and even a break down of what strawberry harvesting activity resulted in the most injuries e.g. twisting, bending over, squatting as well as pruning, harvesting etc. along with the types of injuries being reported.

The aim of the work we are conducting is to address several factors:
- Help resolve the shortage of labor mainly during fruit harvesting.
- Identify aspects of Strawberry harvesting that are causing injuries.
- Broaden the demographic of people able to conduct picking activates.
- reduce fruit loss due to harvest damage.
- Improve working conditions of pickers during harvest.

If we can understand the negative impacts and injuries caused by strawberry harvesting, we can design a new system that see a reduction in these events. we need to know how people are being affected currently such as:
- Is there repetitive picking motion causing arm, back or leg injuries?
- Are there injuries due to use of current equipment within the industry?
- Does moving heavy strawberry weights cause pain?