Research at the School of Agriculture
Research work in the school is aimed at understanding biophysical, social and marketing issues constraining crop and animal production in PNG, sustainable animal and crop production at national and trans-national levels, and developing technologies for the processing of crop production.
Research is undertaken by final year students, postgraduate students, and academic staff. In 2021, 39 third and 29 fourth (final) year students undertook a supervised research work for the subjects, AG312/AG322 and AG403/AG404 special project I/II, respectively.
These students worked on problems relating to crop protection, socio-economics, crop improvement, crop production/management, environmental management, and animal production.
Research topics of the postgraduate students are highly relevant to meet the requirements of the stakeholders, and several of the post graduates are jointly supervised by staff from research institutions and commodity industries e.g. National Agriculture Research Institute (NARI), New Britain Palm Oil Limited (NBPOL), Ramu-Agri Industries Ltd (RAIL), and Oil Palm Research Association (OPRA).
School staff members solely or in collaboration with postgraduate students have published 15 peer reviewed journal articles in 2021 and a few more are currently in the press. Currently, research in the School is funded internally by the University Research funds, or externally by the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), European Union Vanilla Project, Fresh Produce Development Agency (FPDA, and PNG Science and Technology Secretariat (PNGSTS).