Optimizing vineyard management with precision agriculture in northern Italy

Extreme weather conditions and fungal diseases are presenting significant challenges for Italian vineyards. In 2023, Italy's wine production fell below 44 million hectolitres, largely due to unpredictable weather patterns like heat waves and irregular rainfall. These conditions create ideal environments for the spread of diseases, putting the health of vineyards and the livelihood of wine producers at risk.

To address these challenges, vineyard managers are turning to precision agriculture, a data-driven approach that monitors environmental factors and detects early signs of plant diseases. This strategy helps them make informed decisions to safeguard their crops. One company at the forefront of this effort is Prospecto, an innovative start-up out of Brescia, Italy. 

A customizable approach to crop protection

Prospecto (website, LinkedIn) specializes in the design of a customizable IoT system, known as Element, specifically engineered for monitoring plant microclimates. Element provides vineyard managers with essential tools to oversee their crops and respond proactively to potential threats.  

What sets Prospecto apart is its ability to tailor every aspect of its monitoring system, from hardware to software. Their custom-designed electronics track key environmental variables- wind, rainfall, temperature, humidity, soil moisture, and leaf wetness- which are critical for identifying early signs of plant stress or disease. Each sensor is housed in 3D-printed cases that include integrated solar panels and rechargeable batteries, ensuring energy efficiency. To further optimize energy use, the sensors feature a deep sleep system, automatically powering down when not actively collecting data. The modular design allows for the connection of up to 10 sensors to a single printed circuit board (PCB), making the system highly adaptable to vineyards of all sizes and requirements.

Element installed in a vineyard

Given the unpredictable nature of weather and climate, many vineyard managers rely on real-time data for accurate monitoring and forecasting. Element uses LoRaWAN technology to transmit real-time data via solar-powered gateways installed on-site. This information is relayed to the akenza platform, where vineyard managers can access to analyze conditions. By integrating with akenza, Prospecto provides vineyard managers with direct access to sensor data in real-time. The platform allows users to create customized data visualizations, enabling them to monitor conditions and make informed, data-driven decisions quickly. 

Monitoring vineyard and orchard health with Element 

Element has proven effective in two critical challenges faced in agriculture: rain monitoring and heat management. These use cases demonstrate how precision data can improve decision-making in the face of unpredictable environmental conditions. 

Rain monitoring

Element monitors rainfall, alongside tracking environmental factors like temperature and leaf wetness. This enables vineyard managers to assess the risk of fungal disease outbreaks with greater accuracy. By detecting the conditions conducive to fungal growth early, managers can intervene quickly, curbing the spread of disease and reducing potential damage to their crops. This approach has also been successfully applied in other agricultural environments, such as apple orchards, where early identification of infections allows for targeted treatments. 

Isolating infected areas helps prevent the spread of disease to healthy plants, ensuring overall crop health. 

Element monitoring apple orchards

Heat management

With rising temperatures posing an increasing threat to grapevines, heat stress is a growing concern. To combat this, Prospecto is experimenting with protective nets to shield grapes from excessive sunlight.

Element provides valuable data by monitoring temperature differences between vineyards with and without protective nets, enabling managers to evaluate the effectiveness of various heat protection strategies. This approach helps identify the best practices to minimize heat stress and maintain high grape quality.

Data management with akenza

The akenza platform efficiently handles the connectivity and device management of the Element system. akenza consolidates sensor readings from multiple devices into intuitive dashboards, which are fully customizable depending on the use case. Configurable thresholds can be set within the platform, triggering alerts when critical values are exceeded. This functionality helps managers stay ahead of potential issues and take timely actions to protect their crops.

"Prospecto has found akenza the best ally for the agro-climatic variables management and visualization in precision agriculture. The strength is in the complete customization of the platform, which allows the variables to be very quickly usable and easily understood by the final user. In this way, akenza helps make the Prospecto’s ecosystem flexible to every need in agriculture."

-Matteo Soprani, CEO & Co-Founder Prospecto

Thanks to the custom payload decoders of akenza, Prospecto easily integrated their devices with the IoT platform. Moreover, since the modular electronics of Element use different sensors for various orchards or vineyards, the integration ensures the decoder can be quickly adapted, making new installations easy to deploy.

Expanding agricultural applications 

In addition to environmental monitoring, Prospecto is actively developing customized, portable vision systems designed to tackle specific agricultural challenges, including yield estimation, plant disease detection, root growth monitoring, and insect detection. These systems provide geo-referenced images of fields, offering precise insights through advanced image processing. Prospecto welcomes collaboration on new applications tailored to their customers’ specific needs. 

Prospecto is planning to expand its solutions beyond vineyards, with a focus on greenhouse management. This will involve developing new sensors and adapting the technology to suit diverse environmental conditions. By broadening its capabilities, Prospecto aims to tap into new opportunities, both in Italy and internationally, while continuing to deliver solutions that enhance agricultural productivity and product quality.