There is provided a pick-and-plant head for planting plant cuttings in a cultivation medium. The pick-and-plant head is provided with a grasper comprising opposed grasping surfaces for grasping a portion of a cutting between them and with an abutment that abuts a cutting. The grasper and abutment are moveable relative to one another and are arranged so that during release of a cutting from the grasper the abutment passes between the opposed grasping surfaces and the cutting is abutted by the abutment.

Described is a method for vegetative propagation of plants by exposing a plant material to an oxytocin solution and/or a variant and/or derivative thereof.

Described is a method for vegetative propagation of plants by exposing a plant material to an oxytocin solution and/or a variant and/or derivative thereof.

A method for the computer-aided training of an artificial neural network (ANN) for recognizing structural features on objects, by means of which method identified structural features on objects are recognizable rapidly and reliable. That is achieved by virtue of the fact that a convolutional neural network (CNN) having a multiplicity of neurons is used for the training of an ANN for feature recognition on objects. Said network comprises a multiplicity of convolutional and/or pooling layers for the extraction of information from images of individual objects. In this case, the images of the objects are respectively scaled or scaled up and/or down from layer to layer. During the scaling of the images information about the structural features of the objects is maintained, specifically independently of the scaling of the images.

A container, such as a pot, strip or tray, comprising at least one accommodation for at least one specimen from a group, comprising: plants; seeds; seedlings; cuttings and the like, where the accommodation is configured to be filled with a substrate and the container exhibits at least a side wall, a bottom and a top surface to accommodate the substrate and the specimen in the substrate, of which at least a portion of the top surface is open to enable growth of the specimen there through in a longitudinal direction. The side wall includes a completely open passage which is dimensioned for inserting or extracting a block of substrate with essentially a full size of an interior of the accommodation into or from the interior through the passage in a sideways direction relative to the longitudinal direction, where at least the side wall includes a cutting edge alongside the passage.

A container, such as a pot, strip or tray, comprising at least one accommodation for at least one specimen from a group, comprising: plants; seeds; seedlings; cuttings and the like, where the accommodation is configured to be filled with a substrate and the container exhibits at least a side wall, a bottom and a top surface to accommodate the substrate and the specimen in the substrate, of which at least a portion of the top surface is open to enable growth of the specimen there through in a longitudinal direction. The side wall includes a completely open passage which is dimensioned for inserting or extracting a block of substrate with essentially a full size of an interior of the accommodation into or from the interior through the passage in a sideways direction relative to the longitudinal direction, where at least the side wall includes a cutting edge alongside the passage.

Methods of producing sugar cane transplant units that includes planting a sugar cane propagation material in a planting container that has a volume of 10 to 200 cubic centimeters; growing the sugar plant to an age of at least 4 months; harvesting the stalks of the sugar cane plant when the stalks have a length of 10 to 50 centimeters; cutting the harvested stalks into stalk segments, wherein the stalk segments are cut to a length of 1 to 5 centimeters; and planting one or more of the stalk segments into a planting container that has a volume from 10 to 200 cubic centimeters.

Methods of producing sugar cane transplant units that includes planting a sugar cane propagation material in a planting container that has a volume of 10 to 200 cubic centimeters; growing the sugar plant to an age of at least 4 months; harvesting the stalks of the sugar cane plant when the stalks have a length of 10 to 50 centimeters; cutting the harvested stalks into stalk segments, wherein the stalk segments are cut to a length of 1 to 5 centimeters; and planting one or more of the stalk segments into a planting container that has a volume from 10 to 200 cubic centimeters.

The invention provides a flower shipment kit comprising: a container holding an aqueous flower gel; and one or more cut flowers whose stems are immersed in the aqueous flower gel; wherein the aqueous flower gel comprises (i) 1-4 wt. % of disc-shaped smectite clay nanoparticles having two opposing flat surfaces that are negatively charged and a rim that is positively charged, and (ii) 0.01-250 mM of one or more gel destabilizing agents selected from acidulants, dissolved metal cations and dissolved ammonium cations.

The flower gel of the present invention slowly releases water over time in a way that enables cut flowers to take it up immediately.

The invention also relates to a kit of parts for preparing a gelled hydration medium and to a method of preparing such a gelled hydration medium.

A pick-and-plant head for planting plant cuttings in a cultivation medium. The pick-and-plant head is provided with a grasper including opposed grasping surfaces for grasping a portion of a cutting between them and with an abutment that abuts a cutting. The grasper and abutment are moveable relative to one another and are arranged so that during release of a cutting from the grasper the abutment passes between the opposed grasping surfaces and the cutting is abutted by the abutment.