About the product
Wine production in the Douro Wine Region is one of the most important economic sectors in this region, also contributing decisively to the national economy and to the recognition of the country through one of its most iconic products, Port wine. One of the threats to viticulture in this region, in a context of climate change, is related to the appearance of pests, which, in addition to affecting the quality of the grape, can transmit quarantine diseases, which seriously compromise the viability of this crop.
The unpredictability of this threat and the difficulty in monitoring the degree of risk make it difficult to define effective strategies that minimize the number of phytosanitary treatments to be applied. Insect monitoring is currently carried out using traps that attract these insects and subsequently allow their identification. However, counting and distinguishing insects in traps is a manual task that consumes time and resources, for which digital data with sufficient geographical distribution do not exist.
Insect recognition also requires the contribution of specialists in taxonomy, especially in chromotropic traps, making the process, and consequently the diagnostic method, sluggish, watertight and susceptible to errors. This scenario motivated the definition of the EYESonTRAPS project, which proposes the development of a mobile solution for pest prevention, which supports localized temperature recording, automatic monitoring of insects in traps and the recommendation of treatments to combat identified threats, in a way to decrease human error and maximize the analysis process.
The system will also be designed in a modular and scalable way to support the detection of new pests, allowing the identification of species not considered in the project in the future.
EYESONTRAPS COMPONENTS
The project fills the following gaps in the monitoring currently carried out, not only in the RDD but in the most diverse wine regions at national and international level:
- The lack of geographically distributed phenology data (Bagggiolini Scale);
- The lack and better distribution of climate data, with temperature at the location of the trap count;
- Lack of knowledge of taxonomy (species identification) on the part of winegrowers or winegrower technicians (decision-making agents), especially in the case of new pests.
EYESonTRAPS Solution
EYESonTRAPS has the main objective of developing a mobile solution and collective collaboration using smartphones in the field for pest prevention and control. In this project, a new technology will be developed to support the automatic counting and differentiation of insects in traps, including emerging pests in Douro and well-localized and geographically distributed temperature monitoring, with a view to applying phenology models and positioning risk estimates against pests. The more precise detection of insect species will promote a better positioning of risk estimates and a more rational and precise application of phytosanitary protectionmeans, contributing to the sustainable use of pesticides. Phytosanitary effects on crops, consequently protecting and preserving local biodiversity, giving them the opportunity to naturally limit pests, in a strategy of biological protection through conservation..
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