A rice transplanter is a specialized

transplanter A transplanter is an agricultural machine used for transplanting seedlings to the field. Transplanters greatly reduce time required to transplant seedlings compared to manual transplanting. Among the crops that are transplanted with transplanter ...

fitted to transplant

rice Rice is the seed of the grass species ''Oryza sativa'' (Asian rice) or less commonly ''Oryza glaberrima ''Oryza glaberrima'', commonly known as African rice, is one of the two domesticated rice species. It was first domesticated and grown i ...

seedlings A seedling is a young sporophyte developing out of a plant embryo from a seed. Seedling development starts with germination of the seed. A typical young seedling consists of three main parts: the radicle (embryonic root), the hypocotyl (embry ...

onto

paddy field A paddy field is a flooded field (agriculture), field of arable land used for growing Aquatic plant, semiaquatic crops, most notably rice and taro. It originates from the Neolithic rice-farming cultures of the Yangtze River basin in sout ...

s. The two main types of rice transplanter are the riding type and walking type. The riding type is power-driven and can usually transplant six lines in one pass; the walking type is manually driven and can usually transplant four lines in one pass. Although rice is grown in areas other than

Asia Asia (, ) is one of the world's most notable geographical regions, which is either considered a continent in its own right or a subcontinent of Eurasia, which shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with Africa. Asia covers an area ...

, rice transplanters are used mainly in East, Southeast, and South Asia. This is because rice can be grown without transplanting, by simply sowing seeds on field, and farmers outside Asia prefer this fuss-free way at the expense of reduced yield. A common rice transplanter comprises: * a seedling tray like a shed roof on which a mat-type rice nursery is set; * a seedling tray shifter that shifts the seedling tray like a

typewriter A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...

carriage; and * Rice transplanter

plural pickup forks that pick up a

seedling A seedling is a young sporophyte developing out of a plant embryo from a seed. Seedling development starts with germination of the seed. A typical young seedling consists of three main parts: the radicle (embryonic root), the hypocotyl (embry ...

from a mat-type nursery on the seedling tray and put the seedling into the earth, as if the seedling were taken between one's fingers. Machine transplanting using rice transplanters requires considerably less time and labour than manual transplanting. It increases the approximate area that a person can plant from 700 to 10,000 square metres per day. However, rice transplanters are considerably expensive for almost all Asian small-hold farmers. Rice transplanters are popular in industrialized countries where labor cost is high, for example in

South Korea South Korea, officially the Republic of Korea (ROK), is a country in East Asia, constituting the southern part of the Korea, Korean Peninsula and sharing a Korean Demilitarized Zone, land border with North Korea. Its western border is formed ...

. They are now also becoming more popular in South Asian countries because, at transplanting time, labor shortage is at peak levels. Rice transplanters were first developed in

Japan Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north ...

in the 1960s, whereas the earliest attempt to mechanize rice transplanting dates back to late 19th century. In Japan, development and spread of rice transplanters progressed rapidly during the 1970s and 1980s.

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