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speakers
Dr. Adrian M. Johnston - Western Canada Director PPI/PPIC
Dr. Sylvie Brouder - Professor of Agronomy, Purdue University, Indiana
Brent Alexander - Lockhart farmer
Keynote presentations from international guests including Dr Adrian Johnston, Northern Great Plains Director, Potash and Phosphate Institute, will precede sesssions dedicated to local research on crop nutrition, pasture nutrition and soil analysis.
Researchers and agronomists are encouraged to submit abstracts for consideration as oral presentations during these workshop sessions and for publication in workshop proceedings.
Authors of selected papers will be encouraged to prepare them to a standard suitable for submission as a group to the Australian Journal of Experimental Agriculture.
Dr. Adrian M. Johnston
Western Canada Director PPI/PPIC
Dr. Adrian M. Johnston, a native of Prince Albert, Saskatchewan, is Western Canada Director of PPI/PPIC. Dr. Johnston earned his B.S.A., M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees from the University of Saskatchewan. Before joining the Institute staff, he held positions as research scientist with Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada at the Melfort Research Farm and the Extension Service of Saskatchewan Agriculture and Food. His contributions to western Canadian agriculture were recognized in 1999 when he received the Outstanding Young Agrologist award by both the Saskatchewan Institute of Agrologists and the Agriculture Institute of Canada, and the Young Agronomist award by the Canadian Society of Agronomy.
The Potash & Phosphate Institute (PPI), with headquarters in Norcross, Georgia, is a worldwide,
not-for-profit organization which encourages and supports agronomic research and education programs involving sound agricultural use of potash and phosphate, as well as other production inputs.
The Institute is funded by North American producers of potash and phosphate.
Dr. Sylvie Brouder
Professor of Agronomy - Purdue University, Indiana
Dr. Sylvie Brouder received her B.A. in Biology from Harvard University (1985) and her Ph. D. in Ecology from the Ecology Graduate Group at the University of California – Davis (1993). At Purdue, her area of specialization is crop mineral nutrition with an emphasis on rhizosphere ecology, crop ecology, soil fertility and precision agriculture, cropping systems, and water quality. Her appointment is split between research, extension education and on-campus teaching.
Dr. Brouder has research experience in cotton, rice, corn, soybean, and alfalfa production systems. Her research interests include design/implementation of field and controlled environment experiments on nutrient budgets and plant-soil nutrient cycling processes including soil sampling strategies and variable rate nutrient management. She has focused on nitrogen, carbon and potassium, evaluating agricultural systems and management practices with respect to their practicality, ecological viability and sustainability, including influences on surface/groundwater quality and greenhouse gas emissions from agricultural soils. She has expertise in analysis of large spatio-temporal datasets, root/shoot ecophysiology, mechanistic simulation modeling, and development/interpretation of soil and tissue diagnostics.
Brent Alexander
Lockhart farmer
Brent Alexander operates a mixed farming business with wife Simone and father Walter at Lockhart in the Riverina district. They grow predominantly wheat and canola and run a self-replacing merino flock on 5,600 acres. Educated at Yanco Agricultural High School and then onto an Associate Diploma in Agriculture at Wagga Agricultural College, Brent has served in various farming organisations including the recently formed Farmlink Group. In 2003 he was one of eleven successful applicants for a Nuffield Farming Scholarship.
With a keen interest in crop nutrition and soil management, the Nuffield scholarship allowed Brent to travel to New Zealand, the US, the UK, France and the Ukraine to study nutrient management techniques and new technologies in measuring and responding to spatial variation in soil fertility.
He returned convinced that markets and the general public will require farmers to adopt more targeted fertiliser management in the future. To do so, farmers will need greater access to better nutrient management and soil fertility information. Brent will speak about what he learnt on his scholarship tour, but also about sourcing crop and pasture nutrition information in Australia from a farmer’s perspective.
