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Automation in Transplanting:A Smart Way of Vegetable Cultivation


Affiliations
1 ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal 462 038, India
2 College of Technology and Engineering, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur 313 001, India
3 ICAR-National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati 413 115, India
 

Vegetable transplanting is a labourious and timeconsuming field operation when performed manually. The semi-automatic vegetable transplanters are cumbersome to operate due to limitations on manual feeding rates of seedlings which vary with respect to work duration and skill of the operator. Automation in the field of vegetable transplanters has provided opportunities for savings in labour and time required for transplanting operation in open field and controlled environmental structures, i.e. shade nets or polyhouse. The advent and recent advances in transplanting technologies suggest ample scope of working on automated seedling pickup and drop mechanisms using robotics. Use of seedling pickup mechanism in automatic transplanters can repeatedly extract single seedling automatically from the seedling pro-tray with the help of a pair of pins or forks and drop at predefined location. In general, these systems comprise either a machine vision system or end-effector mechanism for extracting the seedling; gripper and a manipulator; indexing drum-type seedling removal device with ejector; or a pick-up system, feeding system and a planting system. Such automated systems have helped ease the transplanting operation and efficient planting of seedlings by maintaining the accuracy, precision and effectiveness in planting seedlings with minimum human intervention. This study highlights the research gaps and developments in smart transplanting technologies used in the field of vegetable cultivation.

Keywords

Agriculture, Automation, Smart Farming, Vegetable Transplanting.
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  • Automation in Transplanting:A Smart Way of Vegetable Cultivation

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Authors

Abhijit Khadatkar
ICAR-Central Institute of Agricultural Engineering, Bhopal 462 038, India
S. M. Mathur
College of Technology and Engineering, Maharana Pratap University of Agriculture and Technology, Udaipur 313 001, India
B. B. Gaikwad
ICAR-National Institute of Abiotic Stress Management, Baramati 413 115, India

Abstract


Vegetable transplanting is a labourious and timeconsuming field operation when performed manually. The semi-automatic vegetable transplanters are cumbersome to operate due to limitations on manual feeding rates of seedlings which vary with respect to work duration and skill of the operator. Automation in the field of vegetable transplanters has provided opportunities for savings in labour and time required for transplanting operation in open field and controlled environmental structures, i.e. shade nets or polyhouse. The advent and recent advances in transplanting technologies suggest ample scope of working on automated seedling pickup and drop mechanisms using robotics. Use of seedling pickup mechanism in automatic transplanters can repeatedly extract single seedling automatically from the seedling pro-tray with the help of a pair of pins or forks and drop at predefined location. In general, these systems comprise either a machine vision system or end-effector mechanism for extracting the seedling; gripper and a manipulator; indexing drum-type seedling removal device with ejector; or a pick-up system, feeding system and a planting system. Such automated systems have helped ease the transplanting operation and efficient planting of seedlings by maintaining the accuracy, precision and effectiveness in planting seedlings with minimum human intervention. This study highlights the research gaps and developments in smart transplanting technologies used in the field of vegetable cultivation.

Keywords


Agriculture, Automation, Smart Farming, Vegetable Transplanting.

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DOI: https://doi.org/10.18520/cs%2Fv115%2Fi10%2F1884-1892