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.

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The growing demand for food to feed the increasing population of India has made it necessary to bring more land under cultivation with assured irrigation facilities. The irrigation sector demands a high amount of the available freshwater resources of the country. Thus, the efficiency of its use is of utmost importance for sustainable agriculture. India is the second-largest irrigated country and is one of the leading countries in terms of the expansion of * Gestion de l'eau d'irrigation à la ferme en Inde: défis et lacunes de la recherche