Dr Keith Pembleton is an Associate Professor in Plant Agricultural Science and the Group Research Leader of the Agricultural Systems Modelling Research group at the University of Southern Queensland (USQ). He has a diverse research and teaching portfolio ranging from pasture and crop physiology and agronomy to whole farm system and catchment modelling and analysis. He has a long history of working alongside and providing research support to the Australian dairy industry in both the temperature and subtropical dairy regions.

Dr Pembleton’s research group brings together biophysical crop and soil modellers with software developers to develop new and novel applications of existing models as well as develop new models and tools. At the centre of his program is a focus on understanding and minimising the risks within forage production systems. Dr Pembleton is the chair of the APSIM Initiative reference panel which has been established to promote the development and use of the science modules and infrastructure software of APSIM.

Dr Ojeda and Dr Pembleton started collaborations 7 years ago and they continue building research projects together. Currently, they are collaborating in two modelling projects. One project CRC is focused on the development of models to predict the effect of soil constraints on crop productivity. The second project COALAR aims to develop an integrated tool (remote sensing and biophysical models) to assess the impact of climate change on livestock productivity in Australia and Latin America.