Anne Wang

Anne Wang

Researchers return to the region

After the challenges of 2020, early career researchers are now getting back out in the field. MRIC is beginning to build a cohort of researchers who are undertaking their PhD and research activities in the region.

Anne Wang’s PhD research project, in which the community is coming together to try to solve some of the region’s biggest water, agriculture and environmental challenges, brought her back to the Mallee in February.

It was the third successful campaign Anne has conducted to collect field data and airborne hyperspectral and thermal imagery at different phenological stages in a 1200-hectare almond orchard.

Anne’s research will help growers and the community better evaluate water and nutrient stress on their crops and improve productivity with the efficient use of crop inputs, resulting in benefits for the environment and profitability.

“My research is progressing well and it is already benefitting the local orchard, aiding in fertiliser and irrigation management,” Anne said.

“This is only a start. I will be developing more robust methods and applying them to different fruit orchards and vineyards across species, and then apply to large-scale satellite datasets, which will make a great contribution to monitoring capabilities at regional scales.”

Learn more about Anne’s research (HyperSens Remote Sensing Laboratory) on the MRIC website.