A lthough automatic transplanting of several field-grown vegetables is a reality, some changes in seedling production are necessary if the full potential of automation is to be realized. In automatic transplanting machines (ATMs) that are available, containerized seedlings such as lettuce, cauliflower, and celery are removed from the seedling trays and planted into the ground without human intervention. The advantages of containerized transplants from a crop production perspective are widely recognized. It is time to recognize and emphasize the features of this growing system that aid in theengineering of automatic transplanting systems. From an engineers perspective, containerized seedlingsare in an orderly array, in a configuration that is repeated again and again, unlike bare-root seedlings, which come in random bunches. Each seedling tray can be treated like a gun-cartridge magazine and fed through an ATM, which removes the seedlings and then places them individually into the ground. Alternative arrangements for presenting seedlings to an ATM include connected paper cells (Nippon Beet Sugar Manufacturing Co., 1985), bandoliers (Boa, 1978) strips of seedling cells (Williams, 1986), and cells within trays (Brewer, 1990). Recently, several engineers from around the world used rectangular seedling trays, with some variations, for their ATMs.