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March 27, 2024 - Italy's largest agronomic monitoring network has been set up in the northern Italian region of Emilia-Romagna, a pillar of the Italian food industry. In-field sensors and artificial intelligence will support fruit growers at multiple levels, providing precise recommendations, for example, on when and how to irrigate, or the right time to apply a treatment against insect pests or pathogens. This next-generation digital agriculture model reduces the time needed to solve problems in the field, increasing efficiency and sustainability. It was developed by the tech company xFarm Technologies together with Conserve Italia, a leading European producer of canned fruit and vegetables and owner of well-known brands such as Valfrutta, Yoga, Cirio, Derby Blue and Jolly Colombani. The project will be fully operational from March 2024 and will run for three years, with the aim of providing agronomic support to the 200 farms involved in the supply chain projects for industrial orchards and supplying apricots, yellow peaches, nectarines, peaches, pears and apples through 7 cooperatives.
The agronomic monitoring network covers 700 hectares. 600 sensors, supplied by xFarm Technologies to Conserve Italia's suppliers, will be installed. The installation of weather stations, soil moisture sensors, leaf wetness sensors and other monitoring instruments in the orchards has already begun. These will allow the creation of monitoring cells to accurately record environmental conditions in the different areas where the growers are located. Farms will then be able to optimise and share the use of the instruments, and each will receive detailed reports on which to base their agronomic decisions, while Conserve Italia's technicians will have an overview that is updated in real time.
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The data collected by the sensors will also be used to carry out field trials and identify the best agronomic strategies for managing orchards. Conserve Italia and xFarm Technologies are studying the protocols and identifying the 10 farms where the trials of new technologies for crop protection against pathogens and efficient soil irrigation will begin.
The trial will use highly innovative tools such as smart traps for automated insect detection based on Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms, predictive models and Decision Support Systems (DSS), which will help to identify the ideal time for treatment to better protect crops and reduce the number of applications. Smart Spraying technology, which has so far been used for variable rate applications on specialty crops, will be tested for fruit counting and maturity detection using computer vision algorithms.
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"This project represents a turning point in the digitalisation of the fresh fruit and vegetable supply chain. New digital technologies make it possible to effectively monitor very large and heterogeneous areas. Fruit crops are notoriously among the most complex to manage, as they can suffer from a wide range of problems that are not always easy to identify and treat. The availability of large amounts of data available from the different production areas will allow better and more timely decisions to be made, increasing efficiency and reducing interventions with a view to sustainability." - says Giovanni Causapruno, Global Head of B2B at xFarmTechnologies.
"We want to continue to give a future to fruit growing in the area where most of our farmers in Emilia-Romagna are concentrated, which is why we are committed to implementing measures to support growers in precision agriculture. - says Daniele Piva, Agricultural Production Director of Conserve Italia - The collaboration with xFarm Technologies is very important. It will help us to move towards a more sustainable production, both for farms and for the environment, a transition that is essential to cope with climate change. The weather stations and sensors installed will provide farmers with detailed information to support their decisions. This data will cover a wide area, going beyond the 200 farms involved, and will also be available to the technicians of the agricultural cooperatives for crops dedicated to the fresh produce market."
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