By Annelies Gartner

Company founded on state-of-the-art technology applications with precision seed delivery systems.

Innovative technology is enabling efficient and sustainable agriculture and large-scale land restoration that benefits the environment and economy.

Founded in 2021, The University of Western Australia’s Centre for Engineering Innovation: Agriculture & Ecological Restoration offers expertise across engineering, plant biology, agronomy, animal production and ecosystem restoration, and aims to enhance the social and economic value and sustainability of agricultural and environmental resources.

Associate Professor Andrew Guzzomi is UWA’s inaugural agricultural engineer, as well as founder and director of CEI:AgER.

“Our interdisciplinary teams work with industry, government, farmers and scientists across Australia and increasingly internationally,” Associate Professor Guzzomi says.

“Western Australia’s unique agricultural and ecological systems are used as a proving ground to help tackle some of the biggest environmental issues including food security and conservation.”

Associate Professor Guzzomi has twice been awarded WA Innovator of the Year in the emerging category — in 2016 for the Seed Flamer, a tool that makes native seeds easier to handle; and in 2019 for the Weed Chipper, a ground-breaking alternative to the use of herbicides for weed control.

Western Australia’s unique agricultural and ecological systems are used as a proving ground to help tackle some of the biggest environmental issues including food security and conservation.

Associate Professor Andrew Guzzomi

The Centre’s eco-tech inventions led to Associate Professor Guzzomi, Dr Todd Erickson (eco-restoration theme lead) and Dr Monte Masarei (eco-tech lead) to found a new company, Emergence Ecotech.

Emergence Ecotech was established after UWA partnered with Biologic Seed, a local company focused on implementing native seed use at scale through a variety of direct seeding and biodiverse planting programs.

Restoring ecosystems and biodiversity

The Seed Flamer alters native seeds to make them easier to handle and plant using machinery, leading to faster revegetation processes.

“Plant biologists run into problems when vast areas, such as abandoned mine sites, need to be replanted with native species,” Associate Professor Guzzomi says.

“As many native seeds have hairy and fluffy appendages attached to them, this makes them difficult to handle and use through mechanised seeding devices.”

The Seed Flamer removes high surface area features without damaging the seeds by exposing them to successive flames for short periods of time.

The seed flaming process reduces storage requirements for the treated seeds and can enable coatings to be applied, further enhancing and protecting the seeds.

Image: Associate Professor Andrew Guzzomi, Dr Monte Masarei and Dr Todd Erickson.

The smoother seeds, whether coated or not, flow through seeding machines making it easier to assist large-scale sowing and increases plant recruitment at scale.

Dr Erickson says the Seed Flamer has the potential to treat more than 19 key WA restoration species and provides a significant boost for large-scale projects required to restore land post-mining.

“Globally 20 to 40 per cent of land, or between 2.6 and 5.2 billion hectares, is degraded and in Australia at least 52 million hectares is degraded,” Dr Erickson explains.

Image: Inside the Seed Flamer, two blow-torches are directed towards the swirling seeds.

“Existing methods of large-scale land restoration are insufficient – native land restoration has less than five per cent success rate of plant establishment and use of non-native plants fails to restore critical biodiversity.

“We discovered a real need for design improvements to existing mechanised seeding equipment.”

Dr Monte Masarei

“We have already improved the seed planting success rate from five to 40 per cent.”

During his PhD, Dr Masarei surveyed 183 entities around the world involved in large-scale land restoration.

“There is a global market for knowledge-informed approaches that have long-term environmental impact,” Dr Masarei says. 

We discovered a real need for design improvements to existing mechanised seeding equipment.

The findings led the team to develop a more efficient device, the Mega Sweeper, to improve large-scale restoration success through the precision delivery of diverse seed types in challenging sloped and rocky landscapes.

The CEI:AgER team offered a Flash Flaming Seed Service to industry and early adopters, included long-term research partners BHP and Rio Tinto, and in the first season (2022-2023) processed 1600kg of seeds.

The Seed Flamer and the team’s precision planting machines have garnered interest with industry and end-users locally and overseas. 

Through these developments, state and federal regulators can have more confidence in approving the build of mine sites, knowing once the mining process is finished, these areas can be easily and successfully replanted with native species.

“We are combining our state-of-the-art seed enhancement technology applications with our precision delivery systems,” Associate Professor Guzzomi says.

“Emergence Ecotech offers a complete service to optimise native seeding for large-scale ecological restoration and post-mining land rehabilitation from planning, precision treating and seeding. 

“The service is practical, cost-effective and time-efficient and will generate significant societal, technological and economic benefits, and have a profound and positive impact on the future of Australia and Australian lives.”

Weeding out a pest for farmers

In agricultural farming regions, herbicide-resistant weeds are a major challenge for food production – the weeds remove nutrients and moisture, which results in reduced yields.

Before the Weed Chipper was invented, farmers used blanket and site-specific herbicide treatments and tilled the entire field for weed control

“While herbicides can be effective in controlling weeds and unwanted vegetation, it can have negative impacts on the environment and human health,” Associate Professor Guzzomi explains.

“Tillage is effective but causes soil disturbance and disrupts soil structure. We wanted to develop an alternative system that was practical, site-specific and non-chemical to enable more sustainable cropping.” 

The Weed Chipper uses sensor precision to activate targeted tillage via an active tyne. The tyne, a tool used for aerating soil and preparing seedbeds, is triggered when it senses a weed and then chips it out.

This approach results in low soil disturbance in paddocks and testing has confirmed very high (90 per cent) weed control efficacies and low levels (1.8 per cent) of soil disturbance.

“An important part of our process has been taking machines into the paddock for farmers and industry partners to test,” Associate Professor Guzzomi says.

In 2021, the team was funded by Department of Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry to research a targeted tillage device for the inter-row region (between rows of crops) during the growing season. 

“We developed an electrically powered tool that reduces carbon emissions and further minimises soil disturbance,” Associate Professor Guzzomi says. 

“The active tool’s electric control system also permits different control strategies.”  

With one strategy, the technology permits fast tractor (platform) speed more than 15km/h with an innovative slow and low-power draw tool motion that permits efficient weed removal at scale. Additionally, the alternative strategy facilitates chip-in-chip-out Weed Chipper motion, which is advantageous for slow-moving autonomous platforms.

As a result of growing commercial interest in the Weed Chipper and mechanical weeding approaches, the team has partnered with sustainable crop solutions company Demagtech.

The company aims to commercialise both targeted tillage technologies to offer solutions for the fallow and in-crop situations across diverse cropping systems.

“Our emerging technologies have significant environmental and economic benefits for farmers, agriculturalists and government bodies,” Associate Professor Guzzomi says.

“A healthier soil and increased yields with reduced herbicide use flows to consumers with produce that has less exposure to herbicides.” 

Read the full issue of the Summer 2025 edition of Uniview [Accessible PDF 13MB] .