A novel automated transplanting system for plant tissue culture

Micropropagation is an advanced vegetative propagation technique for producing high quality and disease-free plants in a short time period. With the increasing demand in agriculture, horticulture, and medical applications, micropropagation has become increasingly important in plant tissue culturing. However, this process is very tedious and labour intensive. A novel automated micropropagation system is developed to reduce the labour cost as well as to increase the throughput and reduce contamination risk by minimising human contact. The system was prototyped and proof-of-concept pilot testing was conducted with one type of blueberry plant, achieving up to 90% success rate. Furthermore, the experimental results showed that its production rate is comparable to the current industry throughput of the manual process. The proposed automated system has a high potential to meet the increasing demand for rapid multiplication of planting materials. (C) 2019 IAgrE. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.