QAAFI Centre for Horticultural Science
DigiHort
Developing Digital Twins, High Performance Computing and AI technologies to advance horticulture
Delivering affordable, adaptable, adoptable and reliable AgTech platforms and solutions to accelerate innovation of farming facilities and planting systems
Enabling real-world impacts with better yield, lower cost and less pollution
Translating university research to create change
Industry-oriented research
Demands, funds, expertise and insights
From industry
Development, validation and demonstration
From industry
Outputs, outcomes and impacts
From industry
Our Technologies
DigiHort Spray
- Optimise spray equipment selection, configuration, and operation
- Minimise agrichemical drift
- Enhance pesticide distribution and deposition
- Prevent over- and under-application
- Make robotic sprayers more precise and responsive, while simpler and cheaper
DigiHort Light
- Analyse light distribution across scales: leaf → canopy → row → orchard
- Optimise orchard design (layout, canopy architecture, density, terrain, latitude)
- Inform canopy management (trellis training, pruning, machine trimming, etc.)
- Accelerate agrivoltaic system design and adoption
DigiHort Phenotyping
- Automated on-canopy fruit detection
- Precise 3D localisation of individual fruits
AI-TC Accelerator
Co-developed with QAAFI Tissue Culture Team
- Optimise tissue culture media
- Accelerate large-scale crop propagation
Our Features
Fidelity
High-fidelity digital twins
Geographic and geometric details matching reality
Complexity
High-complexity simulations
Tens of billions of individual droplets and explicit rays travelling across digital twins
Performance
High-performance computing with commodity hardware
- 7-minute spray evaluation vs 1 day with conventional simulation or 2 weeks in field
- 1-minute tracing of 1 billion rays in orchard digital twin
Accuracy
High-accuracy results
- Validated against field measurements (mechanistic modelling independent from field results)
- Unique ID for every fruit, every droplet, and every ray
Our Online Digital Twinning Platform
Our Case Studies
01
Optimise spray decision and practices within commercial farms
02
Evaluate crop protection and energy generation with orchard agrivoltaics
03
Innovation of narrow orchard systems
Our Contact Information
Our Partners
