Periodic Reporting for period 1 - CERBERUS (MULTIPLATFORM FIELD SURVEILLANCE FOR INTEGRAL CROP HEALTH, EARLY DETECTION AND ACTUATION)
Reporting period: 2024-01-01 to 2025-06-30
CERBERUS (HORIZON-RIA. G.A.: 101134878) has fulfilled several achievements over the first 18 months. With a cloud platform that allows the data exchange from 67 traps in the first year, and 99 traps the second year -half of them automated with direct counting sent to the platform at a daily basis-, growers and consortium researchers have been able to track pests in an innovative way. The platform automatically plots smart-conventional trap catches in real time and anticipates generation peaks by plotting thermal integrals. From a remote sensing perpective, the breakthrough of the platform is the automatically tayloring of relevant Copernicus-based indices and bands to the pilot plots and their crops. In particular, promising results to disentangle biotic and abiotic stress are being obtained for Flavescence doree in grapes (both red and white) and with Xyllela fastidiosa in olives. Spraying and physiological stages of the crops are periodically reported to the platform by field managers, providing excellent means of ground-truth evaluation of crop development and biological efficiency of tratments. With the deployment of smart sprayers in the fall of 2025, pilots will be able to reduce pesticide use and demonstrate savings by the real time monitoring system onboard. Robots will follow in field deployment at the end of 2025, with 10 monitoring bands and up to 14 proximal sensing indices. Finally, citizen science has expanded large-scale monitoring in Cerberus by establishing three groups of citizens in three countries, one per crop (olives in Spain tracking Bactrocera oleae, vineyards in Italy monitoring Lobesia botrana, and citrus in Cyprus focused on Ceratitis capitata). These citizens committed to upload catches into the cloud platform such that project entomologists could validate their catches. The project has engaged stakeholders and citizens in 7 in-person encounters, is being followed in several social networks, and has interacted with other EU-funded projects such as FORSAID, STELLA and BIOVEXO.
In general terms, the work carried out by the CERBERUS consortium has been very satisfactory. The network of traps was installed early, and the pilot fields have been supportive of the procedures set by the coordinator and project managers. The successful implementation of the cloud platform from early stages has been a booster of correlated developments in the early use of insect population constantly sent by smart traps, the automatic downloading of satellite images customized to relevant indices and cropped to user plots, and the active interaction with citizens. The development of ground platforms -robots and sprayers- required the definition, selection, purchase, and delivery of large amounts of components, which has resulted in a 4-month delay in the completion of the platforms. Nevertheless, the four robots are quite advanced in the assembly and a fully operational sprayer has been developed by M18. Project dissemination and communication has been positive too, with active interaction with other researchers, stakeholders, citizens, and related program projects.
One of the key aspects of Cerberus project is its cloud platform. At the end of the first reporting period, 18 months, the platform presents a very good shape. Users from pilots and trained citizens can see that Sentinels' images are downloaded automatically, they can introduce basic information such as catches from conventional traps, phenological state of the crop, conventional spray treatments and, if they have installed smart traps in their fields, they can see their catches at a daily basis. The platform also calculates the thermal integral indicating expected population peaks and give notifications and alerts when field actuation is required, for example to change expired pheromones or report phenological state updates. A total of 45 smart traps were installed in the pilot plots in Spain, Italy and Cyprus. For some species such as Ceratitis capitata and Lobesia botrana, the performance of smart traps has been proved equivalent to that of conventional traps.
Cerberus robots and sprayers are in the last stage of assembly. A master sprayer that will be the model after which CERBERUS sprayers will be replicated has been built and validated. The sprayer is capable of delivering variable rates of flow from 0 L/min to 32 L/min at constant pressure (6 bars). The sprayer computer is capable of reading prescription maps and automatically apply the coded spray rate. The proximal sensing of the robots has been defined and tested, with a capacity to replicate almost all remote sensing indices already acquired from Copernicus from the cloud platform. Following CERBERUS philosophy, both sprayers and robots will be permanently connected to the cloud platform.
Cerberus robots and sprayers are in the last stage of assembly. A master sprayer that will be the model after which CERBERUS sprayers will be replicated has been built and validated. The sprayer is capable of delivering variable rates of flow from 0 L/min to 32 L/min at constant pressure (6 bars). The sprayer computer is capable of reading prescription maps and automatically apply the coded spray rate. The proximal sensing of the robots has been defined and tested, with a capacity to replicate almost all remote sensing indices already acquired from Copernicus from the cloud platform. Following CERBERUS philosophy, both sprayers and robots will be permanently connected to the cloud platform.