TECHNOLOGICAL CAPABILITIES
PLANT PRODUCTION
Horticulture: Technification and improvement in efficiency of horticultural crops
Crop protection:
- Improvement in prediction systems (production control)
- Pest and disease management
- New alternatives to chemical control
New post-harvest treatments: development of protocols that enable a product’s useful life to be extended while maintaining properties and quality
Greenhouses and vertical crops: improvement in the efficiency of production infrastructure based on technification and sustainability.
PRECISION AGRICULTURE (SMART FARMING)
Application of new information and communication technologies (ICT), sensorics, robotics and AI to agricultural tasks, to improve efficiency and reduce inputs:
- Automation of processes and mechanisation of production processes
- Development of measurement systems in agriculture and communication of data with less energy consumption
- Remote sensing for open-air crops using drones and satellites
- Improvement of productivity with mobile robots
- Design of machinery and equipment
DIGITALISATION
Development of data processing systems based on artificial intelligence and deep learning to generate high value-added information for decision making and automation of processes.
- Agriculture 4.0: systems for capturing and processing images and telecommunication systems based on data science
VALUATION
- Design of circular sustainable production processes
- Development of biomaterials based on renewable sources or the transformation of by-products into raw materials
- Reduction of losses in the field
- Development of technology to use plant fibres (hemp, maize, etc.) for textile production, construction and other industries
SUSTAINABILITY
Design of sustainable production processes under the paradigm of circularity within farming and throughout the food chain.
- Management of wastewater to reduce contamination and be able to reuse it
- Design of processes without CO2 emissions to contribute to decarbonisation
- Sources of renewable energy to generate bioenergy
- Preservation of biodiversity of cultivated plants
APPLICATION SECTORS
FOOD
AGRICULTURE AND MARINE ENVIRONMENT
DISTRIBUTION AND MASS CONSUMPTION
HEALTH
CIRCULAR ECONOMY
ENERGY
RELATED PROJECTS
- The AI4WATER project proposes optimizing the use of available water resources, to mitigate the effects of increasing water scarcity in agriculture and to improve food safety through the creation of a digital twin (DT) in an irrigation sector of the Segarra-Garrigues region (Lleida). Participants in the project are the Specific Research Centre in Communication and Detection of the UPC (CommSensLab-UPC), the Center for Industrial Equipment Design (CDEI) and the Geophysics and Earthquake Engineering (GiES) group of the UPC.
- SOPHOS, a project with the participation of the research group Construction Materials and Roads (MATCAR) and the Environmental Engineering and Microbiology Group (GEMMA) of the Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya - BarcelonaTech (UPC), is born. In the framework of SOPHOS, a low-cost technology will be developed and validated to improve the efficiency of the use of agronomic resources, in particular water and phosphorus. This will be designed according to a circular economy model, which will reduce the impact.
- Agricultural robotics is currently an emerging sector. Although initiatives to automate farming tasks are beginning to emerge, most of them are in the United States and […]
- The greatest losses in the viticulture sector come from pathologies caused by fungi. Botrytis cinerea has the greatest economic impact, as it attacks all the green […]
