2025 Excellence in Regenerative Agriculture Award Winner

$5K Prize Sponsored by Taylor Farms

Team Appleseed labs has developed an autonomous reforestation robot that uses a mechanism to execute 3 steps: dig a hole, drop the seedling and tamp the ground. By combining a customized mechanical design and modern AI tools into a single system, robots can help with both the low-level repetitive labor of tree planting and the high-level complexity of forest planning. Our long term mission is to build a robot that goes beyond planting individual seedlings, but that plants entire forests using an intelligent plan that accounts for local conditions and proven ecological models.

Reforestation is one of the most important tools to restore ecosystems, to enhance biodiversity and to reduce the amount of carbon in the atmosphere. Currently, reforestation efforts in extensive tree plantings (>100 acres) rely on highly skilled workers who, through an extremely efficient execution, can plant thousands of seedlings per day. In contrast, small plots (<10 acres) can be effectively reforested by do-it-yourself landowners. However, mid-sized lands—typically between 10 and 100 acres - usually require more labor than a single landowner can manage yet are not cost-effective for hiring professional planting crews. According to our forestry partners, there exists no economical solution for reforesting these mid-sized plots, and so much of this opportunity remains unaddressed.