DEVELOPMENTAND PERSPECTIVES OF AGRICULTURAL ENGINEERING TOWARDS BIOLOGICAL/BIOSYSTEMS ENGINEERING

Systems involving agriculture, food, environment, and energy (AFEE) have played, and will continue to play, a highly significant role in a very large scale biobased economic engine. Agricultural and biological engineering (ABE) is a discipline that integrates life and engineering for enhancement of complex living systems. The strategic alignment between the advances of AFEE systems and the development of ABE discipline and profession is of great importance. Agricultural engineering and biological/biosystems engineering are synergetic in their problem domains and inseparable in their core competencies. At the University of Illinois, an automation-culture-environment systems (ACESys) concept and methodology has been applied to guide the identification, assembly, and integration of core competencies during the evolution from traditional agricultural engineering towards the inclusion of biological/biosystems engineering into a more comprehensive ABE program.