Showcase | Agriculture Victoria’s Smart Farms Bringing Together Tech and Data to Create New Opportunities in Horticulture

Join Ian and Kieran from Agriculture Victoria Research as they take us through the latest work they have been doing in horticulture traceability as well as introducing some of the Hort Tech tools under development. For example, Cartographer is a mobile sensing platform to spatial map orchard parameters like fruit colour; and sensing fruit quality on a platform harvester.

The SmartFarms – located in Ellinbank, Hamilton, Horsham, Tatura and Mildura - bring together technologies and data to support smart information and new opportunities for agriculture. Each SmartFarm is a gateway to research, innovation and technology, and skills development for Victoria’s major agriculture industries.

About Ian: 

Dr Goodwin, is the Research Leader Horticulture Production Sciences in Agriculture Victoria based at the Tatura SmartFarm. Ian has over 40 years’ experience in horticulture research and innovation with a focus on intensive production systems, crop water requirements and climate challenges. In recent years, Ian has established several research orchards including an Agrivoltaics experiment and a Sundial orchard. These orchards have provided a resource to test and evaluate new technologies (e.g., sensors, robotics, auto-irrigation, traceability) for the horticulture industries as well as communicate results to orchardists, students, government, service providers and scientific peers. Dr Goodwin, has written several books including “Regulated deficit irrigation and partial rootzone drying” and published over 200 scientific and industry articles.