Review of Flower Pollination Algorithm: Applications and Variants

Flower Pollination Algorithm (FPA) is a nature inspired metaheuristic algorithm that mimics the behavior of pollination of flowering plants. FPA has been created by Yang in 2012 showing its better performance than other metaheuristic algorithms. Many variants of FPA have been established since 2012 to solve complex problems of different research domains. In this paper, application of different FPA variants are discussed based on modifications, tuning parameters and hybridizing FPA with other algorithms. This paper is very useful for researchers as it introduces general pollination process of flowers, its conversion to algorithm, application of FPA in different domains and particularly to parameter estimation problem of PV cells and modules. Future recommendations have also been given for new researchers.