Agronomy and Crop Science

Academic staff

The following staff are available to supervise honours and masters research in the field of agronomy and crop science.

Dr Sigfredo Fuentes

Project topics:

• Unravelling night-time water uptake and transpiration mechanisms in plants using sap flow sensors, gas exchange and chemometric techniques
• Development of automated analysis tools for remote; sensing information obtained from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and Unmanned Terrestrial Vehicles (UTVs) to characterise plant water status, growth and evapotranspiration processes.
• Incorporating biometrics obtained non-invasively from image and video analysis of subjects to investigate non-concious sensory responses to food, chocolate and brewages.
• Developing wireless automated information systems for in-field monitoring of biotic or abiotic stresses from plants, such as pests and diseases, water and/or nutritional deficiencies
• Development of robotic systems to measure canopy architectural parameters at high spatial resolution for crops.
• Studying the relationship of berry cell death, fruit respiration and the development of flavour and aroma in berries and wines.
• Automated assessment of plant water status of crops using infrared thermography (IRT) and near infrared spectroscopy (NIRS)
• Morpho-chemical characterisation of bubbles and foam from sparkling wine related to protein content from berries and yeast.
• Unravelling the effect of different audio waves and frequencies in the winemaking and ageing processes for still wines and the second fermentation of sparkling wines.
• Automated recognition of smoke contamination in grapevines using infrared thermography and artificial neural networks
• Characterising 2D and 3D soil wetting and nutrient patterns and their relationship with carbon and water economies for crops.

Email: sigfredo.fuentes@unimelb.edu.au

Dr. Dorin Gupta

Sustainable agriculture – innovation and efficiency

• Understanding combined effect of drought and heat stresses on cereal/legume crop production. Crop plants experience more than one stress (biotic and/or abiotic) under natural field conditions. Therefore, it is important to investigate the effect of combined stresses using non-invasive techniques like thermal imaging, high throughput phenotyping and genetic potential of existing crop varieties to sustain the production.
• Exploring wild lentil species to widen the gene pool of cultivated lentils. Wild relatives of crop plants have traits of interest especially, resistance to biotic stresses and tolerance to abiotic stresses, which usually do not exist in their cultivated species.
• Exploring native/indigenous crops for their nutritional profiles and genetic potential to abiotic stresses for sustainability of our food production system.
• Exploring the role of Silica for biotic and abiotic stress tolerance, soil and plant interactions and crop production in cereal, legume, vegetable, and native crops

Email: dorin.gupta@unimelb.edu.au