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Project Topic
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Water is, currently, becoming the most limiting factor for crop production. Irrigated agriculture is one of the major water-consuming sectors and provides challenges for substantial water savings. Precise irrigation tools based on cost-effective technologies aiming to encourage large diffusion and opportunities in developing countries are needed. This proposal aims to design and develop new Digital Agriculture (DA) technologies and procedures crop and soil monitoring finalized at the optimization of irrigation management by improving farm-scale irrigation equipment and water release scheduling for crop needs. The project will take advantage of innovative low-cost technologies such as Wireless Sensors Networks (WSN) for agrometeorological monitoring, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) coupled with different sensors, free satellite imagery, open source Geographic Information Systems (GIS), decision support systems (DSS) and web interfaces associated with data-driven soil and plants models. The project’s output will be a system based on sensing, remote sensing, DSS and irrigation technologies applicable as standalone solution, characterized by high flexibility for different context, namely regarding farming systems, environments, degree of mechanization, management and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) implementation. The systems will be developed in DEMO FARMS pilots located in five representative Mediterranean countries, such as Italy, Portugal, Spain, France and Morocco. Each case study will implement different low-cost Technology Solution (TS) for crop monitoring, consisted on UAV multispectral imagery (Spain), AgroWSN system (Morocco), smartphone App (France), UAV thermal data (Portugal), and an integrated common proposal with the addition of satellite data (Italy). The five TS will be characterized by using a low-cost technology, a data-driven model based on machine learning algorithms and a micro-irrigation system and will be tested and validate on two different crops, tomato as annual crop and grapevine as perennial crop will be chosen. Technological components will be low-cost, flexible and adaptable to be replicable to different locations, crops and farming system. More specifically, each TS will be developed as a lean package and support Mediterranean small-scale farmers in increasing profitability of irrigation and achieve optimal crop yield, while ensuring water quality and quantity, through optimization of water use efficiency with a low-cost approach. The sustainable use of water resources is one of the most important and current challenges facing agriculture, and the future scenario, especially in light of current and progressive Global warming impact, makes this issue even more critical. The monitoring system represents a critical issue between the technologies involved. There are many solutions on the market, however frequently the costs and complexity of these systems do not allow them to be widely used by medium-small companies. These are often proprietary systems, with non-open technology, which further limit the flexibility of use. This represents a significant problem, especially for agricultural realities located in developing countries, which find it so difficult to apply sustainable techniques for the use of water resources. In addition, given that these companies are often placed in climatic contexts characterized by drought and water scarcity, finding a solution to this problem becomes a priority. The project’s main innovation is to demonstrate the feasibility to adopt a pool of TS in crop monitoring and in irrigation system in the Mediterranean area, more resilient to environmental constraints, low cost and able to cope with the global climate change and fluctuations, while simultaneously offering ecosystem services such as soil fertility and biodiversity thanks to an optimization in water use that allow an increase in crop yields and quality.
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