ISHS Acta Horticulturae 355: Plant Breeding for Mankind - Symposium Agribex 94
MECHANIZATION OF THE PLANTING AND PLANT BREEDING |
| Author: | P. P.F.J. Abeels |
| Abstract:
Man must face bio-technical extensive problems for sowing or planting large areas within a relative short optimum season for the vegetal. Specific breeders or planting machines have been designed and are still under specific development for most of the seeds and grains broadly used in agriculture. Typical seeds are those like corn, beans, peas, sugar beet, various cereals. Grain drills features have fitted or adjustable feed driving devices. Tubers and potato planting machines are adjusted following the origins and the related range of dimensions. Transplanting is another operation where seedlings, rooted young plant or cutting, part of rhizome must be installed in a correct position for recovering (examples : cabbage, lettuce, tomato, celery, leek, ornamental plants, etc.). However are those equipments really well adapted to the plant physiology requirements when anatomical modifications occur after breeding ? Planting and transplantation nowadays are still major manual techniques where aerial and root parts must be taken separately into account. The shapes, arrangements and dimensions of the various parts of the plants are heterogeneous and irregular, some of them even require given intervention before installation for the shaping of the shoots and the rootlets. Plant selection and breeding operators should have interest as much in the planting conditions as for the improvement of the varieties. The example of the mechanization of the forest plantation is interesting with that respect. | |
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