Rate My Professor Michael Scobie

Michael Scobie is a Lecturer in Agricultural Technology in the School of Science, Engineering and Digital Technologies at the University of Southern Queensland, Toowoomba Campus. He holds a Bachelor of Science and a Bachelor of Engineering from USQ. Scobie also serves as Senior Research Engineer, Co-Lead of the Ag Tech Adoption Team, Program Director for the Bachelor of Agricultural Technology and Management, CottonInfo Technical Lead for Irrigation, and Research Lead for the One Basin CRC project 'Understanding and Reducing Evaporation Losses in the Northern Murray-Darling Basin' (2025-2027). His affiliations include the Centre for Agricultural Engineering, Institute for Resilient Regions, and Centre for Applied Climate Sciences. He is a member of Engineers Australia, the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand, and the Australian National Committee for Irrigation and Drainage.

Scobie's research focuses on irrigation engineering, water resources management, evaporation control from water storages, precision agriculture, UAV-based crop monitoring, and sustainable groundwater irrigation for crops such as rice and coffee in Australia, Bangladesh, Vietnam, India, and Nepal. Notable projects include assessments of evaporation mitigation technologies in Queensland funded by the Department of Natural Resources and Mines, ACIAR-ICAR collaborations on dry season irrigation for marginal farmers in the Eastern Gangetic Plains, and studies on solar-powered irrigation in Nepal's Terai. He conducted a visiting research stint at Michigan State University in 2019-2020. Key publications encompass 'Controlling evaporation loss from water storages' (2005, National Centre for Engineering in Agriculture, 192 citations), 'Water usage and productivity of Boro rice at the field level and their impacts on the sustainable groundwater irrigation in the North-West Bangladesh' (2020, Agricultural Water Management, 85 citations), 'Win-win: Improved irrigation management saves water and increases yield for robusta coffee farms in Vietnam' (2020, Agricultural Water Management, 52 citations), 'Integrating UAV-based multispectral and thermal infrared imageries with machine learning for predicting water stress in winter wheat' (2025, Precision Agriculture, 15 citations), 'Evaporative loss and environmental impact of covers on water storages: A review' (2023, Journal of Environmental Quality), and 'Efficient water management and irrigation on farms' (2022, book chapter). His work has accumulated over 280 citations across 19 publications.