DESSA · DEcision Support system for Smart Agriculture

Fertilizers and conventional pesticides have been used in agriculture to improve crop yield and control plant pests. However, the excessive and uncontrolled application of agrochemicals has had a negative side effect on both environment and human health. Contamination of water and soil as well as death of non-target species are a few of the environmental effects whilst these pesticides have carcinogenic effects on humans. The EU implemented Directive 128/2009 on Sustainable Use of Pesticides, which incorporates a crop protection practice called Integrated Pest Management (IPM). Rather than solely relying on agrochemicals, in IPM all plant protection measures are considered jointly with the necessary actions that prevent pest population growth. IPM is complex and farmers require decision support systems to assist them in making the best choice about plant protection measures to be taken. Our consortium – agricultural expert Agri2000 Net and ICT/IT specialist 3CiME Technology – has created DESSA, a service which provides accurate, farm-specific information to farmers on the plant protection actions to be performed based on farm conditions. Our system is IoT based and consists of sensors placed on the farm which measure key parameters (e.g. pest/spore presence, humidity, moisture). These parameters are input into cloud-based software that incorporates plant models that have been constructed using Agri2000 Net’s years of agricultural research on plant. The software consists of algorithms that process the data and output to the farmer, in a user-friendly manner on smart devices, the exact measures that must be performed. The decision support is given to the farmer in real-time, based on the conditions on each farm. DESSA results in 15-20% increased plant productivity, 10-30% reduced agrochemical use and 10-30% financial savings for farmers. With this project, our consortium will generate cumulative profit of €8.56 million and ROI of 5.96 by the 5th year of launch.