April 7, 2015
The University of Southern Queensland’s has joined a precision agriculture project which will offer PhD scholarships which will complement its “Future Farm” research.
The Regional Universities Network (RUN) flagship project is the first of its kind in Australia.
Precision agriculture includes the combination of GPS-enabled farming equipment, remote sensing technology and crop monitors in a bid to improve crop yields and reduce expenditure.
“We are delighted to be part of the Precision Agriculture flagship project which complements USQ’s Future Farm research to transform Australian agriculture through the application of robotic and automation technologies integrated with big-data analytics,” Prof Steven Raine said.
Future Farm, which is currently being evaluated by the Federal Government, has been developed in collaboration with the Grains Research Development Corporation (GRDC), the Cotton Research Development Corporation (CRDC) , the CSIRO and seven other university and State Government partners.
“Future Farm is all about delivering technologies that increase farm productivity, reduce costs and enable better management of production and business risks,” Prof Raine said.
The RUN project will establish and fund eight PhD scholarships to be cross-supervised by USQ in conjunction with Central Queensland University, Federation University and the University of New England.
USQ also recently entered into a collaborative partnership with global agricultural equipment manufacturer John Deere to develop new machine automation and control systems to improve agricultural productivity.
