Since 40 years, artificial fruits or dummies are built similar to real agricultural produce in order to measure mechanical load caused due to harvest and post-harvest handling systems. As shown by Praeger et al., 2013 the evaluation of how close these electronic fruits reflect real products impact behavior has been largely neglected during their design.The paper dealt with development of a test method for comparison of elastic characteristics of real potato tubers and of dummy materials (built based on 2 component polyurethane elastomers) falling on metal or plastic materials. Therefore, the trajectory of the produce center of the whole drop process was simulated based on measurements with a miniaturised 3-axis accelerometer inside the samples, force measurements at the impact position and videos made with a high speed camera of the fall and rebound process. A simulation model of the impact was developed and impacts were characterised by forces, coefficients of restitutions, accumulated energy and deformation features obtained by quasi- rigid body impact simulations. Exemplary impact characteristics are presented for real potatoes of different water status and artificial tuber dummies using force-deformation courses and coefficients of restitution. The testing procedure showed to be useful for the systematic design of optimised dummy materials, for instance based on polyurethane elastomers, for a highly realistic replication of impact performance of real fruit and to improve the applicability and accuracy of dummies in field measurements. The drop tests and simulations for tuber dummies and real potatoes showed a wide range of impact characteristics when falling onto steel. In general, impact forces of the currently used dummies were higher and deformations were reduced compared to those of potato tubers. One dummy tested in this study showed impact characteristics widely similar to potato tuber material.