Advances in Automation for Plug Seedling Cultivation and Transplanting in Greenhouses: A Review

The world food security needs the adoption of effective and sustainable agricultural practices, which is affected by factors like population growth, labor shortage, and rising production costs. Especially in vegetable farming that is an important source of nutrients is impacted. Plug seedling systems, where transplants are cultivated in regulated greenhouse conditions, have much to recommend them, such as lower establishment costs, more efficient resource use (water, nutrients, pesticides) and better uniformity of crops. However, cultivating and transplanting of these seedlings are laborious activities, which require precision. This review explores the critical role of agriculture automation technologies in solving such challenges. In particular, we review the results of the current automated solutions used along the plug seedling production chain, such as automatic seedling quality evaluation, machine vision-controlled robotics to monitor and grade quality, robotic, and automated transplanting systems. Analysis of the findings demonstrate that these technologies can be helpful in increasing productivity, maintaining high quality and greatly decreasing reliance on manual labor. Lastly, we recognize existing constraints and future trends in order to offer future research and development directions in the field of smart greenhouse automation.