The tools offered by Agriculture 4.0 are becoming very important to manage the olive grove in an efficient and innovative way. What are the benefits?
The olive-oil supply chain has been facing great changes caused by: international competition with new producer countries, new directives on mandatory integrated pest management, phytosanitary emergencies and climate changes.
The sector is moving towards technological innovation but still needs more in-depth knowledge and skills, as well as tools to support olive growers and technicians in decisions making.
Agricolus is a cloud platform (that is accessible from web) created to optimize the work of farmers and technicians by providing cutting-edge technologies for data collection and analysis: forecast models, Decision Support Systems, remote sensing and smart pest and disease control.
The farm can take advantage of all these features in a single, interactive and easy-to-use environment.
What is OLIWES?
OLIWES provides specific features for olive grove management within Agricolus platform. In 2015 it was selected as one of the best projects by FRACTALS, one of the European accelerators specialized in the agricultural sector.
It is a control and forecast tool which helps to apply the best defense and management strategies for the olive grove in order to increase quality and quantity of olives and oil.
olive grove irrigation model in Agricolus
There are many benefits for the olive growers:
- Prevent stress and plant diseases by estimating the phenological phase and using forecast models for the most common diseases, such as olive fruit fly.
- Organize the crop scouting for phytosanitary monitoring.
- Reduce cost for the use of resources by estimating, for example, the water requirement of the olive grove at all times of the crop cycle.
- Take advantage of a DSS (Decision Support System) which collects, analyzes and interprets data from forecast models, crop scouting and remote sensing.
It is important to underline that agtech platforms are not created to replace agricultural operators: quite the opposite, they are designed to offer the best support in the choices to be faced about when, how much and where to carry out crop operations.
