The DISAVIT project, presented by the consortium formed by SOLTEL (ES), SEACON(HU) and BEIA(RO) has been approved for funding under the EUREKA-EUROSTARS programme.

Vine growing is a very important activity in the EU and especially in Spain. According to the Eurostat report “Vineyards in the EU – statistics”, 3.2 million hectares of vineyards were cultivated in the European Union in 2015, representing 1.8% of the total cultivated area in the EU, and 45% of the world’s vineyard area. Spain is the EU member with the largest area under vines, accounting for 30% of the EU total and 13.4% of the world total.

In recent years there has been an increase in the technical skills of wine growers and more and more qualified technicians are running vineyard operations. This is a sector where quality is the differentiating element, with the need to open up to new markets and the challenge of being competitive in a sector where there are major differentiated brands and where the transformation phase, once the grapes have been delivered to the winery, is highly technical. For this reason it has become increasingly necessary to move towards the modernisation of farms, seeking greater quality control in the field and optimising the use of inputs: water, fertilisers and phytosanitary products.

In relation to efficient harvest management, it is essential to harvest at the optimum time. To make a great wine, you must start with a quality, healthy and ripe grape, with the desired balance between its components, characteristics that are achieved with proper cultivation. Choosing the right harvest date allows us to harvest the grapes at the best possible time for our objective, since once the harvest is done it is impossible to improve the quality of the grapes harvested.

DISAVIT offers a new product to improve environmental sustainability and the performance of grape growing, aimed at a new market characterised by emerging technologies. DISAVIT will provide an innovative, low-cost, easy-to-use and rapid response solution for Intelligent Viticulture, covering all the phenological stages of cultivation and the most important strategic and operational activities: plant health, pesticide detection, resource optimisation, grape quality and ripeness and overall production.

The incorporation of a system such as DISAVIT to the wine sector will allow the optimisation of production systems, as well as reducing the environmental impact of agricultural activities, promoting the adoption of better management tools, with objective decisions based on data, exploiting the opportunities generated by the market for digital services for intelligent agriculture. The system will use technologies and procedures that can be applied in any geographical area and any type of plot and production system for vine cultivation. To this end, advice from the end users will be available throughout the implementation of the project.

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