Thanks to its strong agriculture and farming sectors, Australia has long been a pioneer in new technology that improves the efficiency and productivity of these areas.
Value-added food production and AgriTech has been a focus of the country’s innovation investment for decades, ranging from food processing, production and range to high-tech sensor devices, farm-based robotics and automation, as well as pioneering work in the production of plant-based meats.
Farmers, scientists and researchers are accelerating this embrace of technology to improve these processes, leading the development of drought-resistant crops, robust irrigation systems and technology that can predict the yields of crops.
Australia is already leading the way in this regard, with nearly 500 AgriTech startups this year and 15 AgriTech incubators and accelerators. Australia ranks 14th in the world for food patenting, and fifth in the world for filing alternative protein patents.
The InnovationAus Awards for Excellence 2022 will celebrate some of the leading Australian tech companies in this sector.
The finalists in the Food & Agritech Award are:
The InnovationAus Awards for Excellence finalists and winners will be celebrated at a gala dinner on Thursday November 17. You can book your tickets here.
Behind the finalists:
Australian Bay Lobster Producers Limited has a mission of advancing sustainable, land-based aquaculture biotechnology that helps to farm its lobsters which are famous around the world. The company operates north of Byron Bay on repurposed cane land and has a proprietary patented process for breeding and producing this lobster, using its climate-controlled recirculating aquaculture system.
Hone Carbon is all about using spectrometry – the measurement of the interactions between light and matter – to assist with in-field measurements of soil carbon. It offers a range of handheld devices for monitoring the nutrients in soil, plant tissue and other commodities, along with a machine learning platform to analyse this. The company’s handheld spectrometers also utilise artificial intelligence.
InvertiGro is based in New South Wales and is leading the way in indoor vertical farming solutions. Its fully integrated, cost-effective and flexible vertical farming options aim to improve sustainability and the reliability of food production, to address the global food security challenges. The company has its own hardware, operating software and supporting services.
LLEAF is a New South Wales-based tech company which uses luminescent diffusers to improve growth, yield and crop control, using the power of sunlight to increase photosynthesis. The company has developed its own light spectrum shifting dyes which are now internationally patented. This dye passively shifts the spectrum of sunlight to better meet the needs of plants and the goals of their growers, serving to increase the abundance of food overall.
The InnovationAus 2022 Awards for Excellence are only possible with the support of our excellent sponsors: Investment NSW, AusIndustry, Australian Computer Society, Technology Council of Australia, Verizon, Mimecast, Microsoft Australia, Digital Health CRC (DHCRC), Agile Digital, METS Ignited, Innovation Manufacturing CRC (IMCRC) CSIRO, and Q-CTRL.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.