CRDC, OneBasin CRC, and the University of Southern Queensland jointly funded a short-duration travel grant enabling Michael Scobie to attend the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) annual conference in Toronto, Canada, in July 2025. This support partially covered airfare, accommodation, conference registration, and regional transportation. The funding aimed to facilitate international collaboration and knowledge exchange between Australian research teams and global leaders in agricultural engineering.

The ASABE conference is the largest annual gathering of agricultural and biological engineers worldwide. More than 2,000 delegates from academia, industry, and government agencies convened to share research breakthroughs, emerging technologies, and best-practice innovations. Sessions covered precision irrigation, climate-resilient crops, robotics for agronomic monitoring, and sustainable water-resource management. Michael engaged with keynote speakers and participated in targeted workshops on evaporation mitigation, directly aligning with his Australian cotton industry research.

Michael delivered a technical presentation titled “Mitigating Evaporation Loss from Water Storages: Ideas from the Australian Cotton Industry,” co-authored with Justine Baillie, Derek Long, Sarah Seton, Guangnan Chen, and Marti Beston. The presentation attracted significant interest, leading to follow-up discussions on joint experimental designs and shared funding opportunities across continents.