With the tillage sector undergoing an income crisis, The Dealer was interested to see the recent announcement between Origin Enterprises, UCD and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) to establish a €17.6m precision agriculture centre at UCD focusing on the arable sector. The aim of this new centre is to provide new ways of making the arable sector more profitable.The merging of conventional crop science and agronomic application will be led by Prof Jimmy Burke, along with new digital technology and prescriptive data analytics led by Prof Gregory O’Hare and others at UCD.
With the tillage sector undergoing an income crisis, The Dealer was interested to see the recent announcement between Origin Enterprises, UCD and Science Foundation Ireland (SFI) to establish a €17.6m precision agriculture centre at UCD focusing on the arable sector. The aim of this new centre is to provide new ways of making the arable sector more profitable.
The merging of conventional crop science and agronomic application will be led by Prof Jimmy Burke, along with new digital technology and prescriptive data analytics led by Prof Gregory O’Hare and others at UCD.
Origin announced its plans to increase its R&D capability by appointing UCD’s Prof Burke as its head of research and technology transfer. The Dealer understands that Origin was wooed by other universities in Europe anxious to host this new centre but UCD won out with SFI support.
As head of Teagasc’s crops research centre, Oak Park, and its chief crop scientist for 14 years until 2010, Prof Burke will bring a great depth of experience and knowledge. However, the fact that UCD and Origin are teaming up would appear to be a further blow for Teagasc Oak Park and its crop division, which has lost a number of senior crops researchers/advisers
Origin is deeply embedded in crops research in the UK where it has 55,000 trial plots, 28 demo farms and employ 280 or 29% of all practising agronomists in the UK.
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