Australia
August 28,2024
Why
Advances in data collection, management, and analytics technologies are contributing to a ‘digital agriculture revolution’ in the Australian grains industry.
The May/June edition of GroundCover™ Supplement described how GRDC is investing in the digital agriculture revolution on-farm, combining sensing and analytics to automate tasks and decisions. In this Supplement, we explore GRDC’s investments in the foundational capabilities and resources needed to unlock digital agriculture opportunities in the research, development, and extension (RD&E) sector.
What
We need large-scale analytics capacity to support grains RD&E. Applying analytics to data leads to insights, increased productivity, and, ultimately, better research, development, and extension outcomes.
Analytics for the Australian Grains Industry (AAGI) is a five-year strategic partnership between GRDC, Curtin University, University of Queensland, and University of Adelaide to harness analytics to improve the Australian grains industry’s profitability and global competitiveness.
AAGI provides our industry with substantial capacity and capability across statistics, machine learning, data fusion, and other data sciences. This GroundCoverTMSupplement has case studies of AAGI’s work improving breeding selections, uncovering how environmental factors influence disease incidence, and analysing the efficacy of agronomic management at a sub-paddock scale.
Innovations in Plant Variety Testing in Australia (INVITA) is another major investment in analytics and data. Over the last four years, it has intensively characterised selected National Variety Trial (NVT) sites and has used this data to develop analytics for better-interpreting field trial results.
The May/June GroundCoverTMSupplement highlighted efforts to collate on-farm data and make it available for automated tasks and decision-making on-farm. This Supplement highlights our parallel efforts to make RD&E data findable and available for further innovation through GRDC’s recently-launched Data Catalogue.
GRDC’s investments in Phenomics are also featured in this GroundCoverTMSupplement, and reflect our approach to digital agriculture investment. They are collecting quantitative crop plant observational datasets and applying analytics to support crop genetic improvement and agronomic RD&E. The centrepiece of GRDC’s phenomics portfolio is its co-investment in the multi-million-dollar Australian Plant Phenomics Network. This co-investment will substantially improve the grains industry’s access to high-end phenotyping infrastructure and capability.
How
Data analytics and digital technologies are transforming industry sectors worldwide. It should be no surprise our digital agriculture investments use diverse talent and technologies to realise their intended outcomes. Capacity building in digital agriculture and attracting people with applicable skills into the grains industry will be crucial in the coming years. Examples of capacity building in our investments are also highlighted here.
Given their foundational nature, these investments must also coordinate and collaborate across many organisations within the grains industry to ensure foundational resources and capabilities have broadest impact that is; best bang for buck. The investments in this GroundCoverTMSupplement reflect the diverse talent and resources we access and the breadth of organisations we work with to unlock the research and innovation opportunities across analytics, data, and phenomics.
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