Internationally, efforts are being made not only from the public sector but also from the private sector to include smart and technological solutions that enable the optimization of productive processes in a climate change context. For that reason, during this activity, the expert PhD. Laurent Tits, Project Manager Agriculture, VITO Remote Sensing, Leuven-Belgium, will be one of our lecturers with the topic: “Remote Sensing for Fruit Growing: Useful applications for smallholders, where we will able to know more about leading-edge developments in remote sensing applied to fruit growing producers.
PhD. Juan Miguel Ramirez-Cuesta, researcher of the Higher Council for Scientific Research (CSIC), Murcia, España, will pose the following topic: “The use of Remote sensing for the Application of Risk Deficit in Fruit Orchards”, a topic that focuses on the optimization of the hydric resource for the agricultural production through the incorporation of new technologies related to remote sensing.
The project called HUB SmartFruit ALC has as the main objective to enhance the productivity and the use of optimal resources in fruit-growing systems composed by families in both Chile and Costa Rica, generating and promoting the use of smart solutions based on precision farming and ICT, with a view to strengthening the competitivity and sustainability of family producers of Latin America and the Caribbean (ALC) in the climate change scenario. In addition, the proposal will contribute “to fortify the innovation in the family farming”, “to address specific challenges developing capabilities that strengthen the innovative systems” and “to improve the knowledge management”, through the participative process tackled. The production issues addressed will be the phytosanitary, nutrition and irrigation status.
The specific objectives of the initiative are:
- To shape a regional platform of innovation (PRI) Hub SmartFruit-ALC, fostering the transfer of knowledge, generation of social capital, and development of linkages with the ecosystem of entrepreneurs who sustain the creation of new solutions AgTech.
- To foster the successful adoption of solutions AgTech in the family fruit-growing systems, through the generation and implementation of a technological and collaborative tool of free access called “OpenFruit”.
This project seeks to shape a regional platform of innovation among Argentina, Chile y Costa Rica, named Hub SmartFruit-ALC. This platform will promote the development and adoption of technological solutions based on precision farming to fortify the competitiveness and sustainability of family fruit-growing systems (SFF) of ALC. The platform will develop a software tool that is collaborative and has free access, which is called “OpenFruit”. It is formed on precision farming technologies for small producers and agricultural advisors of the participating countries. This tool will help with the decision-making of farm management, increasing the agricultural yield and promoting effective use of resources.
Chile and Costa Rica lead the activities of technological development, validation, training, and transfer, under the coordination of the Universidad de la Frontera and the Universidad de Costa Rica. The capabilities of both institutions will be complemented with the competences of the Instituto de Investigaciones Agropecuarias (INIA) and the Universidad de Talca de Chile. On the other hand, the Universidad de Buenos Aires (Argentina), will be supporting the implementation of technological applications in family fruit-growing systems (SFF).
It will propitiate the articulation of an ecosystem of AgTech entrepreneurs and companies linked to the value chain of the fruit-growing industry related to the Hub SmartFruit-ALC in order to promote the development of AgTech solutions based on the information generated in OpenFruit. This ecosystem will contribute to the sustainability and scalability of the proposal.
In this context, the activity will take place on October 27th from 11:00 am (UTC-3, CHILE). The activity points to strengthening the research work in the area of AgTech solutions.
Enrollment link: https://forms.gle/91GDQZPjq8fg42YGA
