Current developments in vegetable transplanters in developing countries: a comprehensive review

Vegetable seedling transplanting is an important process in vegetable production systems. Although development of vegetable transplanting machines has accelerated, this task in vegetable cultivation is still performed by hand in the majority of developing countries, despite the fact that it could be automated or mechanized. Projects are being carried out in developing countries to mechanize, and automate, vegetable transplanting. This review provides an overview of manual, mechanical, automatic, or smart vegetable transplanting. Recent work on robotics on vegetable transplanting operations is discussed. The present study thoroughly discusses hand-held, trolley-type, semiautomatic, and automatic vegetable transplanters with single or multiple planting rows used for various vegetables. Information in this review will fill in a gap dating to 2008 and could aid in increasing mechanization of vegetable transplanting operations and improving transplanting intelligence research.