DIPOL Project

We made our second visit to the precision agriculture test site yesterday. It is the apple orchard located in Župa near Nikšić that was selected as a pilot location for precision agriculture pilot of the DIPOL project. Previously installed equipment was inspected and we also installed a brand new weather station. This orchard is now equipped with IoT nodes for measuring soil moisture, leaf wetness, air temperature and humidity, precipitation, and pheromone traps with HD cameras. All of the equipment is solar powered with 3G communication. This equipment and software comes from DunavNET’s AgroNET Solutions and should improve the irrigation planning, disease prediction and spraying, and frost management.

Precision viticulture and smart agriculture IoT equipment installation at “13. jul Plantaže” took place today. In addition to existing Smart irrigation nodes, we installed smart pheromone traps with HD camera and local weather station to be used in the pilot throughout next season. DIPOL privided these two new types of IoT devices to be used in the pilots for Precision viticulture and Smart agriculture in peach orchard. This is continuation of the collaboration between University of Donja Gorica, DunavNET, and company Plantaže.

The Society of Economists and Managers of Montenegro, in cooperation with the University of Donja Gorica and the Baltic Management Development Association, organized the XXIV Regional Milocer Development Forum. The theme of this year’s MRF is “Ecology: Regulation, Education, Business”. The event was organized at the Grand Hotel, Cetinje, and at the University of Donja Gorica, September 14-18, 2019.

DIPOL project, as well as new Horizon 2020 DEMETER project, was featured and presented within panel discussions on Tusesday, September 17th. The agenda for the event can be found at: http://www.demcg.me/files/download/1568191753_5894.pdf

As a result of sustainability, internationalization, partnership development, and new proposal writing activities, DIPOL project partners achieved a major milestone. We joined a great consortium, worked on the proposal for new Horizon 2020 grant that was accepted and will be supported by the European Commission. This is a very important result of efforts by DIPOL partners and collaborators. The project is called “DEMETER – Building an Interoperable, Data-Driven, Innovative and Sustainable European Agri-Food Sector”. DEMETER’s goal is the creation of a secure and sustainable European IoT technology and business ecosystem whose impact could be transformative in the EC food and agriculture sector, and potentially across the world. The is one of the largest project in this domain in Europe. More info at the following link.

The DEMETER Project is a large-scale deployment of farmer centric interoperable smart farming-IoT based platforms delivered through a series of 20 pilots across 18 countries (15 States in the EU). Involving 60 partners, DEMETER adopts a multi-actor approach across the value chain (demand and supply), with 25 deployment sites, 6,000 farmers and over 38,000 devices and sensors being deployed and participants involved come from different production sectors (dairy, meat, vegetables, fruit and arable crops), production systems (conventional and organic) and different farm sizes and types, optimising the data analysis obtained across multiple farms. DEMETER will demonstrate the real-life potential of advanced standards-based interoperability between IoT technologies by adapting and extending existing standards into an overarching Agricultural Information Model, concurrently ensuring security, privacy and business confidentiality across the full value chain in multiple agri-food operational environments.

This is another Horizon 2020 project for the University of Donja Gorica and company “13. jul Plantaže”. Together with DIPOL partner, company DunavNet from Novi Sad, they will be responsible for implementing the Montenegrin pilot.

Precision agriculture equipment installation has began. Five IoT sensor nodes aimed at smart irrigation and insect control are being installed at our partner locations. First measurements are coming in. These pilot installations aim fruit orchards use cases of the DIPOL project.

The Cooperation agreement between the Faculty for Information Systems and Technologies, University of Donja Gorica, and the company “Naše Voće DOO” was signed with the aim of developing cooperation between the industry and academy, encouraging and supporting research, scientific and educational activities. In Župa near Nikšić, the company “Naše voće” is building one of the biggest and most modern orchards in Montenegro. In the near future, intensive cooperation is expected in the implementation of pilot projects and development of partnerships for joint project applications financed through national and European calls.

A technical report “Optimal irrigation as a tool of precision agriculture” has been presented at the 8th Mediterranean Conference on Embedded Computing (MECO 2019) as a result of the partnership between University of Donja Gorica, “13. jul Plantaže” and DunavNET. The paper has been made available through IEEE Xplore online library. The paper describes the early results of smart irrigation IoT nodes that have been installed in “13. jul Plantaže” vineyard during past two years. More information available at the following link.

The Montenegrin Academy of Sciences and Arts, the Committee on Information and Communication Technologies, organized the 2nd Scientific Conference “Information and Communication Technologies – Condition and Perspectives”, which took place at the CANU on June 10, 2019. The presentation titled “IT Megatrends and the World Around Us” included introduction to Montenegrin project with interdisciplinary components and applied computer science. DIPOL project was featured during this presentation. You can see the program by clicking here.

The latest issue of PC Press magazine from Serbia brings a special supplement covering the subject of Precision Agriculture. Among other things, the text covers activities carried out by companies DunavNET, 13. jul Plantaže and the University of Donja Gorica in Montenegro: an IoT based system for monitoring soil moisture and optimization of irrigation, lately using LoRa communication, a pilot system for counterfeit prevention and brand protection using smart tags and mobile application. The article is also announcing new installations of IoT pilots including meteo stations and insect traps for use in orchards and vineyards under the DIPOL project.

DIPOL project is featured in promotional video by the Ministry of Science of Montenegro together with other Montenegrin scientific grants funded by the Ministry for 2019-2020 time frame. There was over 70 applications and only 15 grants were accepted and approved for financing. Information about DIPOL project is given at 2:51.