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Building a sustainable food production with smart IoT applications to increase crop quality and reduce waste
Smart farming solution for agriculture
As the chosen technology partner, Cloudflight was part in the EU Horizon 2020 research program for building a warning IoT solution for agriculture. The goal was to inform growers of the risk of crop damage through a mobile application powered by an IoT backend and Machine Learning models.
The challenge
Informing growers before their crops are exposed to heat damage
Due to climate change, today's crops can easily get sunburned. Growers are faced with compromising crop quality and storability, leading to enhanced food waste. To tackle this, it was our goal to develop an IoT platform based on risk models. Together with our project partners, ranging from universities, public organizations up to agricultural institutions, we identified the most important factors of the risk model.
The idea
Connecting satellite weather data with crop sensor data
The modelling of temperature distribution at the fruit surface, validation of the temperature distribution model and findings on the fruit damage resulted in a ‘Field Uniform Risk Model', which gave us the necessary input for building the IoT solution. Key topics on creating this IoT solution included data collection, building the actual AI model and designing an easy-to-use user interface in the app. After meeting the cyber security criteria we delivered the design prototype for validation by the user groups and scientists.
The solution
Clear and calculated recommendations for actions of growers
Together with the project team, we developed a system that informs growers upfront before crops are getting sunburned. The Field Uniform Risk Model for heat damage was implemented by providing a mobile app enabling:
- Risk alerting for growers based on satellite weather data, by running artificial neural network models
- Uploading data by the user for further improvement of the thermodynamic model to contribute to optimized fruit production measures
Both the use of the model and the app can be customized for use with specific requirements such as tree architecture assessment, irrigation management and crop heat damage.
Our project partners
ICT Agrifood
ICT-AGRI-FOOD strives for more sustainable and resilient agro-feeding systems with digital technology. Data from the entire food chain is used to make smarter, healthier and more tailored choices based on information about environmental impact, origin, nutritional value, safety and integrity.
Horticultural Knowledge
HK Horticultural Knowledge was formed in 2011 by a group of ecophysiologists that work or have spent several post-doc years at the University of Bologna. Although quite different for interests and research expertise, the team shares a very strong passion for research in horticulture.
University of Bologna
The University of Bologna, located in Bologna, Italy, is a public research university. Established in 1088, it holds the distinction of being the oldest continuously operating university in the world and the first institution to award degrees in higher education.
Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences
The Hungarian University of Agriculture and Life Sciences is a technology-focused university in Hungary. The university comprises eight different faculties dedicated to study and research, enrolling around 15,000 students.
Leibniz Institute for Agricultural Engineering and Bioeconomy
The Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies, is a German research institute focusing on agricultural economics, conducting research in the agricultural and food sectors.
This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program under grand agreement no 862665 ICT-AGRI-FOOD.
