An intermittent seedling feeding geneva mechanism for rape transplanter was designed. By analyzing the molds of kinematics and dynamics of the seedling feeding mechanism, the minimum drive torque was determined as the optimization goal. The relationships between seedling drop time and geneva pause time and between link number and seedling cup were set as constraints. A two slot and six round pin geneva mechanism with drive torque equal to 87.2 N•m and pause time equal to 0.4 s was found to be the optimal scheme satisfying the constraints by Matlab software analyzing. The test results shows the optimized mechanism runs smoothly and the seedling feeding accuracy rate reached up to 92.9%.