Abstract: Abstract: Transplanting trees is a high intensity work, which is necessary to be mechanized in modern society. At present, most of the tree transplantation machines are developed on the basis of general excavators, which have the disadvantages of high power requirement and high energy consumption. Its performance can be improved in 2 aspects, which are the power matching of the whole machine and the resistance reduction during digging process. The commonly used tree transplantation machines in the market dig holes with a shovel. The shovel is an important part of the machine. The machine's digging performance and the energy consumption are determined by the size, shape and quantity of shovel. In order to reduce the resistance of the shovel, scholars have carried out a series of researches on bionic structural and surface. It is noticed that some animals living in soil for a long time have the characteristics such as geometric non-smooth units on the surface of theirs body, which is the main reasons for reducing the viscosity and resistance, and the soil animal-ground beetle is a typical representative of this feature. In order to reduce the resistance and the energy consumption effectively when digging soil, the paper analyzed the force of the shovel and established the mechanical model according to the working conditions and characteristics. Solidworks and ANSYS/LS-DYNA software were used to establish the numerical model of the shovel and soil, digging process was simulated in software and the force of the shovel was calculated. Through numerical simulation, the digging angle of the shovel was optimized; it was found that the optimal digging angle of the shovel is 83°. Then, a new type of bionic shovel was designed to simulate the surface structure of the soil organ of soil animal-ground beetle, there were many convex units with the shape of sphere on the surface of the shovel, and the size, shape and distribution of the convex units is main considered. Under the condition that the digging angle of the shovel is 83°, the best parameters of the bionic shovel were obtained by numerical optimization: the convex diameter is 14 mm, the center distance of the convex is 28 mm, and the height of the convex is 4 mm. The bionic shovel was developed according to the best parameters and was installed on the prototype of the tree transplant machine to carry out the comparison test. Because the shovel is operating inside the soil, it is impossible to accurately measure the force by sticking the strain gauge on the surface of the shovel, so the hydraulic cylinder pressure of the driving was tested to reflect the force of the shovel indirectly, that is, the force of shovel was equal to the inlet pressure multiply with the inlet area of hydraulic cylinder. 5 times experiment were carried, and the maximum and average force of shovel were recorded: The maximum force of bionic shovel was 2.474 kN, compared with 2.783 kN of the original shovel, the force was reduced by 0.309 kN, the average force reduced 0.512 kN. The results showed that the bionic shovel can effectively reduce the resistance of 11.11%. The bionic shovel is proved to have a good resistance reduction characteristic, which can provide technical support for energy-saving and consumption reduction of the tree transplant machine.