Endowed with three advanced laboratories, the Division embraces agricultural mechanization to lessen drudgery in farming operations, raise labor and machine efficiency, increase land productivity, and reduce production cost. The objective is to provide farmers and other users with the choice of machine power and equipment suited to their needs. Towards this end, it involves the use of tools, implements and machines for land preparation, crop production, harvesting, on-farm and postharvest processing, etc. Nevertheless, Taiwan’s agricultural mechanization has advanced to a stage where engineering alone can no longer provide further gains in labor productivity and profit margin due to high labor costs and sophisticated demands on production and quality. As a result, the Division currently places its R&D emphasis on high-degree automation technology.Moreover, the Division takes up agricultural meteorology research to extend and fully utilize the knowledge of atmospheric and related processes to increase or stabilize crop productivity. In cooperation with soil scientists, agricultural hydrologists, plant physiologists, entomologists, plant pathologists, and agronomists, this Division’s scientists study the effects of weather and climate on plant physiological and phenological processes, plant disease epidemiology, insect pest infestation, crop yield, water-use efficiency, and the energy balance of crop production systems. And the study has been made easy with a network of 13 each of first-order (including one set up in this Institute) and second-order automated agricultural weather stations across the country.
