Each day, millions of us load fresh fruit and flowers into our shopping baskets. The global trade in cut flowers and citrus fruits together are worth around €30 billion. However, when it comes to embracing technology, these big businesses tend to remain stuck in the past.
In 2017, serendipity brought Martina Drobná into contact with biologist and entomologist Dr. Bruno Gábel. ‘It all started with my mum,’ said Drobná, a Slovakian-based graphic designer and coordinator of the CITRUS-PORT project. ‘She told me about her new neighbor in Modra (Slovakia), a brilliant scientist, who was working on ways to help fruit growers predict the disease and pest risk for their crops,’ she said.
When the two met, Gábel explained how his hand-written calculations had helped local grape growers by forecasting likely disease risk at different times. This meant producers could target spraying when treating their crops, and they didn’t need to spray continuously as they had in the past. Drobná was sold. Together with IT entrepreneur Roman Korbačka they created a website and app called VitiPort.
‘Our aim was to create a decision support system – which could advise growers on whether or when to treat crops,’ she explained.
Read the complete article at www.horizon.scienceblog.com.
