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REGIONAL AND REMOTE QUEENSLAND 
Professor Yvette Everingham ‘i-RAT’, an irrigation rapid assessment tool July, 2025
Yvette Everingham has been busy using funding obtained through the Great Barrier Reef Foundations and partnering with Agritech Solutions. Yvette and her team have recently developed ‘i-RAT’ (irrigation rapid assessment tool) for farmers in north Queensland to decide which irrigation strategies will deliver the best economic and reef outcomes through improved water quality. Based on the Agricultural Production Systems Simulation Model (APSIM), i-RAT allows the user to compare many different irrigation scenarios that would be physically impossible to trial in the field. Whilst i-RAT was mainly developed for farmers and their extension officers in the Burdekin sugarcane growing region of north Queensland, it has also been found to be useful for bankers and eco-investors across Queensland. In practical terms, ‘What would farmer Fred - or Federica – do with this new system? Well, they could sit down and explore what a low risk/high return irrigation system would look like and mean to them in their farming operation. This system would then give them a lot more confidence in trying more efficient irrigation processes and investing and installing climate-smart precision irrigation equipment on their sugarcane farm. The i-RAT system now means a farmer in north Queensland could be a lot more ‘water-savvy’.  For more information: i-RAT: a new tool for more efficient sugarcane irrigation - JCU Australia Previous issues of Regional and Remote Queensland
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