2020 PA Symposium

Event Phone: 0437422000

SPAA in conjunction with the Precision Agriculture Laboratory, Sydney Institute of Agriculture, are thrilled to bring you #PASympoisum20.

Whilst this time of the year we are usually promoting our annual #PASymposium, the effects of COVID19 with travel and social distancing rules means we regrettfully won’t be staging a face to face event. Rather we will stage an hour long webinar.

Date: Wednesday September 30th
Time: 3PM AEST, 2.30PM ACST and 1PM AWST.
Cost: FREE

Our keynote speaker is President of the International Society of Precision Agriculture, Jess (James) Lowenberg-DeBoer from Harper Adams in the UK with a talk to focus on the future of PA with specific points on:

• Technology opening doors – AI, robotics, better sensors,
• Economic pressures on PA technology development, entrepreneurship and farmer adoption, and
• The role of the ISPA

Also on the program we will hear snapshots from:

1. Dr Alison McCarthy Senior Research Fellow (Irrigation and Cropping Systems), Centre for Agricultural Engineering (CAE), University of Southern Queensland

Future farming: Machine vision for in-season nitrogen assessment in grain crops

Alison works on precision engineering and management solutions for use in the cotton, grains, dairy horticulture and sugar cane industries. Her research interests cover control and sensing systems for monitoring and irrigation of field crops, management of in-field spatial and temporal variability, and the developing tools for growers to evaluate the scale and impact of infield variability. Alison’s research has led to the development of real-time adaptive control and low-cost camera-based sensing systems to reduce labour in plant growth monitoring, and improve and optimise the irrigation of field crops. Her latest research looks at using machine vision to assess N in cereal crops.

2. Dr Paul Greenwood Senior Principal Research Scientist, Extensive Livestock, Livestock Systems, NSW Department of Primary Industries, Armidale Livestock Industries Centre, UNE Armidale.

eGrazor

Paul has a joint appointment with CSIRO Agriculture and Food in Armidale and is an Adjunct Professor at the University of New England. He trained in Agricultural & Animal Sciences at Sydney University and Cornell University and was a livestock extension officer prior to his research career. Paul has worked for many years on regulation of growth and development in ruminants. He currently leads a major collaborative research initiative on grazing efficiency. This project area is focussed on the use of wireless sensor networks and animal-worn devices to estimate intake of pasture from behaviours, and enhanced productivity and efficiency of grazing livestock and grazing systems.

Paul Greenwood- Senior Principal Research Scientist (Extensive Livestock Systems) from the NSW Department of Primary Industries, Armidale NSW

3. Mathew Webb Senior Spatial Analyst, Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment (DPIPWE) Tasmania.

A real-time mapping application to monitor air temperatures at very high spatiotemporal resolutions

Mat is heavily involved with delivering the mapping component of the Water for Profit Program, to deliver decisions support tools to improve farm profitability for irrigated agriculture. His recent work includes Table wine and Sparkling wine suitability mapping for the state using the latest advancements in high resolution climate mapping. He is currently a PhD candidate with the University of Sydney looking at high resolution climate mapping as applied to delineating frost risk, chilling hours and growing degree days in a viticulture context. His latest research looks at how they can be applied for real-time and forecasting applications to assist growers in the digital age.

Registration is now OPEN

Zoom details will be posted on this page closer to the event. Please regularly checkin.