The Sustainable Agricultural Production research group has internationally recognised expertise in sustainable intensification of crop production.
Its researchers combine their expertise in agronomy, plant physiology, plant genetics, crop growth, integrated farming systems, and new technologies to simultaneously enhance productivity and ecosystem health.
News and events
Contact
For enquiries, please email Dr Dorin Gupta - dorin.gupta@unimelb.edu.au
The Sustainable Agricultural Production research group offers capabilities and skillsets which covers various applied and fundamental research areas in various crop, pasture and animal production systems.
Our specific areas of research include:
- Pre-breeding and breeding of abiotic and biotic stress resistance to develop new crop cultivars
- High throughput phenotyping of genotypes for various abiotic and biotic stresses
- Speed-breeding to shorten the crop breeding cycle
- Resource efficient microgreen production protocols in soilless vertical farming set-up
- Understanding dual-purpose crop production for sustained grazing, crop yields and maintaining soil health
- Understanding native crop cultivation and their nutritional profiling for their development as commercial crops. from paddock to plate
- Understanding silicon-mediated drought and heat tolerance at the physiological, biochemical and molecular level for crops
- Understanding drivers for enterprise diversification at a regional level
- High power microwave heating of agricultural and biological materials
- Microwave-assisted pyrolysis of biowaste for the recovery of valuable products (biochar, bio-oil and syngas)
- Microwave plasma treatment of surfaces for disinfection and surface treatments
- Microwave holography for detection of objects embedded in other materials
- Automatic data acquisition development
- Applications of Geographic Information Systems (GIS) in agriculture and resource management
- Robotic dairy use in pasture feeding system
- Greenhouse gas emissions mitigation from livestock production
- Feed efficiency biomarker development
- Crop use in dairying
- Grazing management of livestock
- Gender mainstreaming in projects
- Gender analysis and assessing gendered impacts of agriculture projects
- Gendered impacts of Whole Family Extension approach on dairy-beef smallholder farmers
- Institutional analysis of green infrastructure
- Impacts of wastewater irrigation on livelihoods and food security of smallholder farmers
- Impacts of urban agriculture on livelihoods and food security of smallholder farmers.
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Crop trials at scale, agronomy, nutritional profiling and breeding
The Sustainable Agricultural Production group offers controlled and field trials, including for native crops, and breeding for desired traits.
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Vertical farming in a fully controlled soilless environment
The Sustainable Agricultural Production group offers evaluation of microgreens and other crop production for resource efficiency and nutritional biofortification and analysis in a fully controlled vertical farming set-up.
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Microwave applicator systems and evaluation of microwave and plasma treatment of materials
The Sustainable Agricultural Production group offers experimental and semi-commercial assessment and modelling of microwave heating in agriculture, forestry and other applied contexts.
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Use of crops for dairying production
Experimentation with different hay crops that can be used in dairying production, including investigation of quality and yield characteristics.
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Greenhouse gas emissions identification and mitigation from international livestock production
We use Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) calculating tools to identify and suggest mitigation strategies for greenhouse gas emission from international livestock production.
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Gender Analysis and Gender Mainstreaming for agricultural and rural industries
Gender analysis is a socio-economic analysis that uncovers how gender relations affect a development problem. Gender mainstreaming is integrating a gender equality perspective at all stages and levels of policies, programs and projects.
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Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) and livelihoods impact assessments
Sustainable Agricultural Production research group members can help organisations solve complex issues and adapt to change through applications of the Institutional Analysis and Development framework (IAD) and livelihoods impact assessments.
Meet the academics and graduate researchers involved in the Sustainable Agricultural Production research group.
Group leader
A/Prof Dorin Gupta
Associate Professor Dorin Gupta, a distinguished crop scientist and educator, with almost two decades of academic experience in India and Australia. Holder of the prestigious Vavilov Frankel Fellowship, her research focuses on enhancing sustainability, efficiency, and stress resilience in staple and native crops, covering agronomy, pathology, genetics, and genomics.
dorin.gupta@unimelb.edu.auStaff
Dr Sajitha Biju
Sajitha, a seasoned crop scientist, has an extensive research and teaching background in Australia and India. Her research interests span silicon, legumes, sustainable food production, nutritional aspects, plant stress physiology, and biochemistry. Currently, she is investigating Silicon’s role in managing symbiotic nitrogen fixation in drought-stressed lentils for her Melbourne post-doctoral fellowship.
sajitha.biju@unimelb.edu.au
Waseem Ashfaq
Waseem is a crop science researcher with more than decade of research experience in Australia and abroad. His research interests include cereal physiology, sustainable food production and agronomy. Currently, he is working in a multi-disciplinary team to evaluate the potential of different farming systems practices to enhance the farm’s overall profitability, sustainability and adaptation to climate change.
Dr Razlin Mohd Azman Halimi
Razlin is a legume researcher with a decade of research experience in Australia and abroad. Her research interests include crop adaptation to biotic and abiotic stress, nutritional composition, nitrogen fixation, seed quality, metabolomics and high throughput non-destructive analysis. She is part of a multidisciplinary team investigating practices to improve drought resilience of broadacre farms.
raz.mohdazmanhalimi@unimelb.edu.au +61358339229
Dr Omid Alasti
Omid, an accomplished crop science researcher, excels in multi-scale research endeavours. His research interests encompass crop production gap analysis, crop simulation modelling, climate change's impacts on crop production, and data analysis. Omid contributed to prestigious projects such as Global Yield Gap Atlas (GYGA) and food security analysis until 2050 over Iran.
Colette Day
Colette is involved in the Future Drought Fund project Redesigning Broadacre Farming Systems in SE Australia, and supports work on native crops and grasses at UniMelb. Colette worked as a food scientist in industry for over 35 years on major Australian brands with leadership positions in dairy, food formulation, consumer research and marketing.
Sineka Munidasa
Sineka is a research assistant for the ACIAR funded project . She has 4 years of research experience in Australia. Her research interests include addressing climate change's impacts on agricultural production systems, including both adaptation and mitigation efforts. Additionally, I am interested in promoting sustainability within the agricultural systems.
Collaborators
Prof Timothy Reeves
Professor Reeves AM FTSE is a pioneer of no-till research in Australia. He has held distinguished positions as DG of CIMMYT, Mexico, member of the UN Millennium Project Task Force on Hunger; and a senior expert at FAO. He is an Honorary Professor at the University of Melbourne and served as Professor in Residence at Dookie Campus (2018 – 2022). He has received numerous commendations, the latest being Order of Australia in 2022.
t.reeves@unimelb.edu.au +61358339225A/Prof Surinder Singh Chauhan
Associate Professor Surinder Singh Chauhan is an animal scientist, leading research programs to deliver sustainable and efficient livestock production systems (cattle, sheep, goats, and pigs) for quality animal protein for consumers. This is achieved by developing strategies to mitigate heat stress impacts, reducing methane emission, and to identify and deliver innovative tools to improve meat quality.
ss.chauhan@unimelb.edu.au +61383444744Dr Gayathri Mekala
Dr Gayathri Mekala is a lecturer based at Dookie campus. She is a gender-in-agriculture specialist and a social scientist with international experience in social, gender, institutional, governance and public policy aspects of agriculture, water resources and urban green infrastructure.
gayathri.mekala@unimelb.edu.au +61358339220
Dr Vili Iese
Te’o Lau Dr. Viliamu Iese (Vili) is the Associate Director Vic Drought Hub, and a Senior Research Fellow based at Dookie campus. He conducts research in risk resilience in agriculture, the impacts climate change on food systems and livelihoods, diets and health, climate-change loss and damage, and evaluation of climate-change adaptations in Pacific SIDS.
viliamu.iese@unimelb.edu.auStudents
Olajumoke Ogedengbe (Jummy)
Olajumoke Ogedengbe (Jummy) is currently a doctoral candidate at the University of Melbourne.. Her research focuses on enhancing plants' resilience to drought stress through the exploration of various silicon application approaches. With over a decade of experience, she has contributed to numerous projects as an Agricultural Officer with the government of Nigeria.
Navya Beera
Navya is currently pursuing a doctorate degree at the University of Melbourne. Her research is focused on enhancing lentil crops resilience to abiotic and biotic stresses through silica supplementation.
Alumni
Dr Hari Dadu
Hari obtained his Ph.D. from the University of Melbourne (2019). His research identified and characterised the resistance sources to Ascochyta blight within lentil genotypes. He currently manages the cereal disease program at AgVic Horsham, and his research investigates the epidemiology and developing management strategies for foliar diseases of wheat, barley and oats.
Dr Mahya Tavan
Mahya’s PhD research centred on soilless vertical farming ensuring resource efficient micronutrient cultivation, including biofortification strategies. Mahya is currently undertaking a postdoctoral fellowship as part of the Sustainable Nutrition initiative (SNi) at The Riddet Institute, New Zealand. Her current research is focused on dietary modelling and understanding sustainable healthy diets.
The Sustainable Agricultural Production research group underpins its capacity through unique skill sets which include fundamental, applied and adaptation research covering staple and minor crops and mixed farming.
Research capabilities in various fields have led to established national and international collaborations with research organisations and commercial partners to fill the research gaps in areas such as sustainable intensification of agricultural production including crop agronomy, resource use efficiency, genetics, abiotic and biotic stress resistance and mitigation including microwave aided weed management and driver to the adaptation of needed change at production and policy level.
Sustainable Agricultural Production research team members have national and international experiences, and disseminate their knowledge through public speaking at national and international conferences, to industry bodies, in university teaching and in the media.