PURPOSE: To simply and readily harvest a fruit vegetable by cutting the stalk part of the fruit vegetable on the basis of a comparison between the area of a main body part of the fruit vegetable and the area of the stalk part, both the areas being detected with an optoelectronic sensor.

CONSTITUTION: A beam-emitting part 16 and a beam-receiving part 127 of an optoelectronic sensor 1 for detecting the main body part and stalk part of a fruit vegetable are disposed on attaching plates 18, 19, respectively, in a state freely transferable with step motors. The areas of the main body part and the stalk part are computed from the transfer distances and compared with prescribed values to decide the stalk part, which is cut with a cutter 22 and received in a bucket 23.