Fine wine, cleaner oceans, improved animal welfare and more as Irish tech experts lead €14 million EU-wide CYBELE project

Irish tech experts are helping to harness the power of superpowered computers to help vineyards across the globe to improve grape quality and yields and ultimately give us better tasting and potentially cheaper wine.

The ground-breaking Climate Smart Predictive Models project is just one of nine real-life case studies being monitored across the crop, fishing and livestock industries in 14 countries. Sensors are being placed in vineyards in Spain and data they produce is being fed to a supercomputer which tracks the impact of climate change and sets off early warning alerts for frost and other potentially devastating weather events for vines.

Other strands of the project look at optimum protein rich soya production, reducing potential pollution from surplus fish food as well as boosting animal welfare in pig farming. It’s all part of a €14 million EU-funded CYBELE project which sees farmers, consultants and technology experts working hand in hand over three years to slash food waste, improve animal welfare and the quality and yield in food production across the EU.

“A third of food produced across the world is lost or wasted every single day. This has a massive economic and environmental impact.” project coordinator, Dr Steven Davy of the Telecommunications Software and Systems Group (TSSG) at Waterford Institute of Technology said. TSSG is home to over 80 research scientists and engineers who are experts in ICT in agriculture.

“Agriculture is a high volume business often plagued by low operational efficiency. One of the main roadblocks is that many farmers aren’t very tech focused. We’re now giving farming consultants the tools to bridge the gap between technology and farmers.

“We routinely rely on multi-billion euro supercomputers for DNA sequencing, weather predicting and more. They crunch in seconds the data we will collect across the crop and livestock projects using satellites, drones, sensors and more. Analysing the findings could traditionally take weeks.

“Our ultimate aim under the Horizon 2020-funded CYBELE project is to produce technology that will revolutionise farming, reduce scarcity and increase food supply, significantly boost animal welfare and bring social economic and environmental benefits,” Dr Davy added.

Director of Research at TSSG, Dr Sasitharan Balasubramaniam, said: “This is a great example of the use of ICT for Smart Agriculture and in particular the use of Super Computer to crunch large quantities of data that can help improve future farming practices.”

Other sample projects now underway within CYBELE include optimum protein-rich soya bean growth. Data gathered using satellites is examining where best on farms soya beans should be grown when they should be harvested and what grade produces optimum yield etc.

“Another group within the 31 partner consortium across 14 countries is examining fish farming and when best to feed fish to boost their welfare and growth, reduce morbidity and potential pollution from rotting, uneaten feed. Data gathered using overhead and underwater drones are again fed to the supercomputers which process the information in seconds.

CYBELE is a three-year programme which is examining five crop-based case studies as well as four in livestock – two of which involve fish, the final two in pig rearing.