Handle with care: Driven by a shortage of skilled workers and increasing wages worldwide, robotics researchers and horticultural growers are partnering to develop robots that enhance the productivity of the human workforce

FROM THE HEADLINES, you might think that robots are on the point of replacing hard-working human fruit, veg and flower pickers, thus solving the difficulties that farmers have in recruiting a workforce to bring in the harvest. The reality is somewhat different. Robots that can mass-harvest horticultural crops may be at least five years away – but prototypes are already working in fields, glasshouses and poly tunnels to plant cuttings, control disease, pick berries and assist in the breeding process.