Abstract: A fruit harvesting belt and bucket system provides for the redistribution of weight from the wearer's shoulders to the wearer's hips. The belt includes a padded back support and a front support. There is an extrusion on the front support that is used to connect to a bucket, which is strapped to a person wearing the belt. The belt is adjustable, and may be made of a variety of materials, such as nylon. The bucket may hook onto the extrusion on the belt, and the bucket has a closeable opening at the bottom, which is used to release the harvested fruit.

Abstract: A pipetting system is provided which includes 1) a microtiter plate, 2) a multichannel pipette, and 3) a rack for recieving the microtiter plate and the multichannel pipette. The rack includes multiple rows corresponding to the rows of the microtiter plate. The rack and the multichannel pipette are constructed so that for each row, the pipette can be inserted in the rack in only one left/right orientation. In this way, errors due to misorientations of the pipette with the wells of the microtiter plate are eliminated. Methods for staining cells for flow cytometry using the pipetting system are also disclosed.