Highlight First-of-its-kind payload engineered for performing controlled pollinations in Loblolly pine orchards. Payload performance verified in laboratory experiments to ensure sufficient pollen injection. Conceptual system architecture developed for integration with unoccupied aerial systems (UAS). Abstract. This article reports the design of a robotic pollination system suitable for use with an unoccupied aerial vehicle (UAV) aimed at performing controlled crosses in loblolly pine seed orchards. In controlled crosses, paper exclusion bags are placed over female strobili to prevent natural pollination, and pollen from known origins is manually introduced into the bag. The proposed system comprises a six-degrees-of-freedom parallel manipulator equipped with a pollinator needle end effector. The end effector consists of a claw mechanism with two links for bag stabilization and needle injection. A pneumatic device ejects pollen through the needle, and a perception system using a stereovision camera with an object detection model for bag detection estimates the appropriate orientation of the manipulator before actuating the pollinating device. The device was evaluated for successful delivery of pollen inside an exclusion bag. It was found to require less than two attempts for successful needle insertion into a bag with vertical orientation. The system also delivered the required pollen within two seconds of air pump actuation. This work presents the first step towards aerial robotic pollination for performing controlled crosses in loblolly pine and lays the groundwork for automating controlled pollinations using exclusion bags. Keywords: Aerial manipulator, Agricultural robotics, Forestry automation, Stewart platform, UAV pollination.