Today@Dal

Dr. QAMAR-UZ-ZAMAN, Precision Agriculture Research Chair, Department of Engineering, Faculty of Agriculture is the 2014 recipient of the Glenn Downing Award in recognition of his outstanding work in industry, teaching, research and extension in the area of machinery systems.

The Glenn Downing Award is presented annually to a member of the Canadian Society for Bioengineering who, in the opinion of the Awards Committee, has produced outstanding work in industry, teaching, research, or extension in the area of machinery systems, or bioenergy systems.

Dr. Zaman has established the Precision Agriculture Research Program (PARP) in Atlantic Canada to increase farm profitability while minimizing environmental impacts.

He has developed a strong and effective partnerships with industry, government and other institutions to support Precision Agriculture research needs. Dr. Zaman has played a very active role in receiving infrastructural research grants from the Canada Foundation for Innovation and NSERC-Industry, which allowed his research team to establish state-of-the art facilities for undertaking Precision Agriculture systems research. His research program has also been funded, consistently and continuously, by federal and provincial governments, international funding agencies, industry partners and grower’s associations.

Dr. Zaman is now one of the pioneers in the field of Precision Agriculture and has already developed variable rate technology for real-time spot application of agrochemicals as well as fertilization. In fact, he has received the US Patent Publication # 2012/0195496 A1 for the development of his “Variable Rate Sprayer System and Method of Variably Applying Agrochemicals.” He saved significant amount of agrochemicals (herbicides up to 80% and fungicides up to 40%) with cost-effective VR sprayer in blueberry fields. He also modified commercial VR spreader for spot application of fertilizer and saved 45% fertilizer as compared to uniform application of fertilizer. Nitrate-Nitrogen concentration in ground water was also decreased with VRT and it was below contamination limit for drinking water. These innovative precision agriculture systems are affordable, reliable and farmer friendly. He is very confident these viable new technologies can be implemented in North America ! and will significantly increase input use efficiency, reduce production cost and improve crop productivity while minimizing environmental impacts. His book chapter on rice crop monitoring with unmanned helicopter remote sensing images has received worldwide attention.

Teaching has been a major part of Dr. Zaman’s academic duties in the past 20 years. His teaching evaluations, at both undergraduate and graduate levels, are very exemplary. One of his primary goals has been the teaching and training of highly qualified individuals at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Dr. Zaman, during the past six years, has supervised or co-supervised many undergraduate students as well as five post-doctoral fellows, six international researchers, nine M.Sc. and five Ph.D. students. He has conducted several workshops at local, national and international levels.

Dr. Zaman published more than 40 peer-reviewed articles in prestigious scientific journals. One of his publications was featured on the cover page of a North American Journal of American Society for Horticultural Science, HortTechnology. He is highly sought out for national/international seminars and workshops and has made over 100 conference, industry and extension presentations over the past few years. He also published articles in regional and national grower’s magazines, newspapers and developed fact sheets and operational manuals for growers and machinery manufacturers’ use. His research was promoted in different national and international television channels such as CNN, MSNBC, Fox News and PBS, CTV, Express and is available on Google Video and YouTube.

Dr. Zaman is recognized internationally for his accomplishments in fundamental and applied precision agriculture research. He has worked in four internationally renowned Precision Agriculture programs including the University of Florida, University of Agriculture, Pakistan, Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology and Dalhousie University Canada.

He has been serving as visiting professor in Pakistani universities and has been nominated as Next Generation Machinery Leader by the International Commission on Agricultural Engineering.

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