Modelling and imaging development for precision agriculture
MIDA project aims at completing an innovative technology for the aerial orchard surveillance. MIDA permits to obtain a clear indication about the pathogen infection risk among fruit orchards. The forecast of infection risk is permitted by the innovative combination between weather data and drone aerial imagery. On the other hand, the historical and current weather data are modelled via an innovative neural network able to predict the leaf wetness on geographic base. The prediction is then obtained by combining the multi-spectral aerial imagery with wetness index to output a localised risk index. This index is relevant to forecast a possible microbial pathogen outbreak at single row level. The MIDA concept, EYE-SCAB, has been already successfully applied to apple orchards in Trento Region to forecast scab disease. The results show that this methodology can optimise the prevention against plant microbial disease with an 80% of confidence. A large-scale application of this technology to fruit agriculture is then expected to optimise the scab disease prevention and to reduce the massive quantity of agrochemicals currently needed. This also implies very relevant costs saving for farmers. The possibility to manage localised treatment at single row level, will indeed permit to optimise preventive treatment avoiding large epidemies with consequent harvest losses. A decreasing occurrence of fruit scab will also reduce the discard by food industry thus preventing further food waste. 
By implementing MIDA, Metacortex expects to foster a serious business growth in the new segment of precision agriculture systems thus diversifying its traditional product offer and opening towards a new and international market. MIDA project will further benefit from the peculiarities of Trento Region and from the viability of many stakeholders involved in apple production life cycle. These conditions can support further MIDA development and its validation activities.