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Centre for Agricultural Engineering

The Centre for Agricultural Engineering delivers applied, practical and profitable research solutions that strengthen agricultural productivity and address environmental management challenges in Australia and overseas. 

The Centre’s research focus includes irrigation and water resources management; farming systems innovation; energy efficiency and renewable energy; bioresource recycling; robotics, automation and machine vision. 

Themes and Projects

For over 30 years, the Centre has been working with industry to develop more sustainable and efficient ways of using water sustainably to grow crops and support the environment. Irrigation research is conducted across a wide variety of agricultural industries nationally and internationally. 


UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering is completing research on broad-acre surface irrigation, large centre pivots and lateral moves, to automatically optimise irrigation events with novel technologies developed by our Irrigation & Water Management team.


Title: Dry Season Irrigation for Marginal and Tenant Farmers  
Leader: Erik Schmidt  
Project Team: Michael Scobie | Lidya Agustina | Dr Jochen Eberhard | Ralph Shippam | Rupak Sarkar, UBKV (North Bengal Agricultural University) | Mohammad Mainuddin, CSIRO | Santosh Mali, Indian Council for Ag Research  
Project Partners: IWMI, International Water Management Institute   
Funding Body: ACIAR Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research 

UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering is supporting irrigation development in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, which include the Nepal Tarai, Bihar and West Bengal regions, and is one of the most densely populated, poverty-stricken belts in South Asia. The Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research is investing in research aiming to improve the livelihood of women, marginal and tenant farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, through improved water use and increased dry season agricultural production.


Title: Direct one-step measurement of broad-acre crop evapotranspiration 
Leader: Dr Simon Kelderman 
Project Team: Associate Professor Joseph Foley | Associate Professor Nigel Hancock  
Project Partners: CRDC, Cotton Research and Development Corporation  
Funding Body: CRDC, Cotton Research and Development Corporation   

Direct one-step measurement of water vapour flux from broad-acre irrigated cropping is a focus research area for the Irrigation & Water Management team at UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering. The Cotton Research and Development Corporation is supporting this post-doctoral work of Dr Simon Kelderman to further refine sensor selection and deploy his novel system in commercial fields to allow industry to obtain direct crop evapotranspiration rates.


Title: Investigating alternative evaporation mitigation technologies
Leader: Michael Scobie  
Project Team: Erik Schmidt | Dr Pamela Pittaway | Dr Guangnan Chen 
Project Partners: Former Queensland Department of Resources, now Queensland Department Regional Development, Manufacturing and Water | CRDC, Cotton Research and Development Corporation  | Gwydir Valley Irrigators Association 
Funding Body: CRDC, Cotton Research and Development Corporation   

The largest loss of water in the northern Murray-Darling Basin is the evaporation and seepage from on-farm water storages, and the Irrigation & Water Management team at UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering remains keenly focussed on this “wicked” problem. The Cotton Research and Development Corporation is supporting this work to determine alternatives and further refine real commercial options for regional water managers across Australia to reduce this stored water loss.   

The research team delivers outcomes by combining agricultural sciences, agricultural inputs and practices, agronomic production databases and precision agriculture technologies to efficiently manage agronomic and livestock production systems.


Title: Cassowary Coast Reef Smart Farming 
Leader: Debra Telford | UniSQ leader: Professor Bernard Schroeder  
Project Team: Associate Professor Troy Jensen | Bruen Smith | Debra Telford | Peter Becke | Maria Solis | Renee Cluff (CANEGROWERS Innisfail) | Dr John Pickering | Sam Moore (Evidn) 
Project Partners: CANEGROWERS (Innisfail) | Evidn  
Funding Body: Great Barrier Reef Foundation (GBRF) through Terrain NRM  
 
UniSQ Centre for Agricultural Engineering is partnering with CANEGROWERS Innisfail and Evidn Pty Ltd in a GBRF-funded project that aims to improve nitrogen-use efficiency (NUE) in sugarcane production systems. 


Title: Automated Small Plot Cotton Trial Picker  
Leader: Associate Professor Troy Jensen 
Project Team: Bruen Smith | Tim Johnson 
Project Partners: Cotton Seed Distributors (CSD) | CSIRO  
Funding Body: CSD | CSIRO

The purpose of this project is to develop a new automated on-board weighing system for a commercial 4 row seed cotton picker. The system will be developed for the existing JD7760/CP690 pickers.


Title: Integrating soil and water management in vegetable production in Laos and Cambodia 
Leader: Dr Alice Melland 
Project Team: Dr Jochen Eberhard | Erik Schmidt 
Project Partners: Cambodia Agricultural Research and Development Institute | Clean Agriculture Development Centre | National Agriculture and Forestry Research Institute | National University of Laos | University of Tasmania  
Funding Body: Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR)

This project aimed to improve soil and irrigation water management in Laos and Cambodia to achieve sustainably improved vegetable yields and households’ economies. Laos and Cambodia are developing economies seeking to improve crop yields for domestic consumption and export markets.

The research team explores alternative energy, waste recovery and energy efficiency options that enable industry to generate self-sustaining energy systems and ultimately cater for their own energy needs. A key area of research focus is the conversion of agro-industrial waste into profitable clean energy with a focus on biogas and biofertilisers from organic waste.


Leader: Professor Bernadette McCabe  
Project Team: Dr Diogenes Antille (CSIRO) | Dr Serhiy Marchuk | Dr Jochen Eberhard | Ms Seonmi  

Project Partners: Pyrocal Pty Ltd | Logan City Council | Urban Utilities | Queensland Department of Environment and Science | University of Technology Sydney | University of Melbourne  
Funding Body: Australian Research Council as part of its Industrial Transformation Research Hubs scheme 

The University is a key partner in the NiCE Hub and is working with water utilities, Government departments, energy and resource companies, agricultural and horticultural businesses and local councils to investigate the value of biofertiliser from a range of organic waste streams.


Title: Pilot to Paddock (P2) Innovative on-farm water, energy and nutrient technologies and practices for Australian Dairy, Egg, Pork and Cropping industries  

Leader: Dr Stephan Tai
Project Team: Dr Peter Harris | Dr Serhiy Marchuk | Torben Grell | Professor Bernadette McCabe 
Project Partners: University of Queensland | University of Western Australia | Agriculture Victoria | Department of Agriculture and Fisheries, Queensland | Scolexia Consulting 
Funding Body: Australian Government Department of Agriculture, Water and the Environment as part of its Smart Farming Initiative program. 
 

The University is taking the technical lead in this nationwide research, which is focused on taking manure from various agricultural industries and finding the best ways to turn it into valuable products that can be re-used back on farm.


Project Team: Dr Peter Harris | Lee Williams 
Project Partners: Toowoomba and Surat Basin Enterprise | Toowoomba Regional Council  
Funding Body: Fight Food Waste CRC 

Toowoomba is home to significant agricultural and food processing sectors and the project offers a unique opportunity to explore existing technologies to produce an income stream from waste. The project aims to map the quantity and quality of waste products that end up in local landfill and explore technologies available for converting it into high-value products such as energy and solid or liquid fertiliser.


Project Team: Dr Diogenes Antille (CSIRO) | Dr Serhiy Marchuk 

Project Partners: Queensland State Government | Fight Food Waste CRC  
Funding Body: Waste to Biofutures Fund, Queensland State Government 

Funding from the Waste to Biofutures Fund has enabled the procurement of a lab scale granulator to develop specifications for novel, enhanced-biofertilisers that meet the requirements for field application using standard farm equipment (physical properties) and nutritional needs of crops (chemical composition). 

The team develops advanced robotic sensing technologies to enhance autonomy in crop production, biosecurity and animal welfare on-farm, with aims for on-farm adoption in the commercial farm conditions of today. The team also provides leadership on the integration of sensing systems with agricultural robotics into the future.


Title: Machine vision monitoring of chicken welfare 

Leader: Dr Cheryl McCarthy 
Project Team: Dr Derek Long 
Project Partners: AgriFutures Chicken Meat Program  
Funding Body: AgriFutures 

Technologies to estimate weight, uniformity and behaviours of meat chickens are being developed by UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering and a commercial partner, which will assist farmers to meet production goals as well as monitoring chicken welfare.


Title: Moon to Mars initiative 

Leader: Dr Cheryl McCarthy 
Project Team: Dr Cassy Percy | Professor Peter Brett 
Project Partners: Australian Space Agency  
Funding Body: Australian Space Agency through its Moon to Mars Demonstrator Feasibility Grant 
 
UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering is developing novel machine vision technologies to monitor food plants on extended space missions and has recently completed a project for the Australian Space Agency.


Title: Time motion analysis in the deboning of beef carcasses 
Leader: Professor Peter Brett 
Project Team: Basem Aly 
Project Partners: Oakey Beef Exports 
Funding Body: Oakey Beef Exports 
 
Video analysis has been undertaken of the time taken for skilled butchers to achieve specific cuts from a beef carcass on a production line. The outcomes of this project will allow Oakey Beef Exports to evaluate the many improvements made on the production line since the 1960s and maintain a sustainable and competitive position in the meat processing market.


Title: Machine vision for improved pest management in cotton 
Leader: Dr Alison McCarthy 
Project Team: Dr Derek Long | Yiyi Xiong 
Project Partners: Queensland Department of Agriculture and Fisheries  
Funding Body: Cotton Research and Development Corporation 
 
UniSQ’s Centre for Agricultural Engineering has developed an app ‘PestDetect’ that uses the smartphone’s camera and image analysis to detect and count silverleaf whitefly, leading to improved insect sampling in cotton crops. A follow-on project is targeting further priority crop attributes for crop protection.  

Industry and collaborators