The Development in Research on the Auto-picking up Seedling Mechanism of a Self-feeding Transplanter for the Plugged Seedlings

Abstract. The production of vegetables in China has become increasingly mechanized.But the current transplanting machines can‘t provide the seedlings into the transplanter automatically.As a result seedling transplantion is still one of the most labour-intensive aspects of vegetable farming. The auto-picking up seedlings mechanism is the bottleneck to resist the mechanization of vegetable production in China now. The author discussed the current development and the existing problems on research of the auto-picking up seedlings mechanism and compared several typical structures and principles of the mechanism.The gap between the domestic auto-picking up seedlings mechanism and the foreign auto-picking up seedlings mechanism was analyzed. The developing trend and the corresponding countermeasures of the auto-picking up seedlings mechanism of the vegetable transplanter were provided.The design basis to fit the characteristics of planting seedlings was drawn.The study will accelerate the process of automatical planting of vegetables and flowers.