Dr. Aitazaz A. Farooque

Dr. Farooque’s research focuses on fundamental understanding and development of state of the art precision agriculture (PA) technologies for Eastern Canada’s agriculture industry. Development of innovative and novel PA systems utilizes knowledge of engineering design, development and management, instrumentation, design and evaluation of sensors and controllers, development of hardware and software for automation of machines to sense targets in real-time for spot application of agrochemicals on an as-needed basis to improve farm profitability while maintaining environmental sustainability.

Dr. Farooque is actively working on machine vision, application of multispectral and thermal imagery using drone technology, delineation of management zones for site-specific fertilization, electromagnetic induction methods, remote sensing, and digital photography technique for mapping, bio-systems modeling, artificial neural network, deep learning, analog and digital sensor integration into agricultural equipment for real-time soil, plant, and yield mapping. Dr. Farooque has been evaluating the variable rate technologies for potential environmental risks.

Dr. Farooque has been very successful in securing research funding from Natural Science and Engineering Council of Canada, Provincial and Federal Governments and agriculture industry. He has been supervising undergraduate and graduate students, research assistants, and post-doctoral fellow at UPEI and other collaborating institutions. Dr. Farooque highlighted the significance of his research in peer-reviewed journals, conference proceedings, workshops, industry meetings and farmer’s field days.