Former Visiting Associate Professor, 2019
tr358@cornell.edu
Education
PhD – University of Western Australia (2008)
BSc.Agr – University of Sydney (2001)
Research interests
In 2019, I was a visiting Associate professor in the Sustainable Cropping Systems Lab from Southern Cross University in the Australian subtropics. My interest lies broadly in sustainable cropping systems, including wet, subtropical farming systems and semi-arid broad-acre farming systems. Much of my work focuses on understanding nitrogen (N) and phosphorus (P) behavior in soils and crops, with a view towards improving the efficiency of use of these nutrients in agriculture and minimizing their impact on the environment. More recently I have been working on techniques to increase plant diversity within cropping systems to improve soil function without compromising crop yields. This work links with concurrent research on organic farming systems, where cover cropping is being investigated as a means to enable direct drilling of winter cereals in organic systems to minimize soil cultivation in these systems.
Work with the Sustainable Cropping Systems lab was investigating fall-sown wheat emergence and yields following direct drilling into roller-crimped sorghum sudangrass, sunn hemp, soybean, buckwheat or tillage radish cover crops.