AN EXPERIENCE ON THE AUTOMATION OF PLANT CUTTING TECHNIQUE FOR PROPAGATING PLANTS

抄録

Plant cutting is a technique for propagating plants in which a piece of the source plant, called the cutting, is placed in the soil to grow as an indipendent plant. The cutting produces new roots and stems, and thus becomes a new plant. This technique is used in workshops to reproduce plants for selling. In this paper we are presenting a system to automate the plant cutting process of ornamental plants. The process starts with a single stem of the parent plant, with no branches. The system is able to cut the stem for producing the cutting, to remove the leaves from its basal part, and to manipulate it for the hormone subministration and for the insertion in the substrate. The design and the prototype of the automation machine, based on the pneumatic technology, is presented in this paper.