Europe’s first digital innovation hub for agriculture unveils AgroDigiRise project

The first digital European innovation hub AgroHub.BG, in which TechnoLogica participates, presented the AgroDigiRise project at the biggest agricultural event in Bulgaria — the tenth national agriworkshop of the National Association of Grain Producers.

At the forum, which took place in Plovdiv, the team of the Bulgarian software company introduced farmers to how they can increase their productivity using high-tech tools.

The aim of the project, funded by the European Commission, is to create a large-scale collaborative network between farmers, digital experts and scientists. A consortium of 15 organisations will present different innovative technologies to farmers in Bulgaria so that each farmer can decide which one is best suited to their farm and invest in it if they wish to.

The innovations that the project hopes to roll across Bulgarian agriculture will be piloted on 16 farms, and all producers will be able to visit them and choose the most useful technology depending on their needs.

Vasil Vassilev, Product Manager of Satellite Monitoring Solutions at TechnoLogica, and Marian Markov, Senior GIS Consultant, presented the benefits of satellite imagery for precision agriculture. Sensors uploaded on optical satellite platforms detect reflection not only in the visible light spectrum, but also in the invisible spectrum. The near-infrared spectrum is the most useful for monitoring vegetation, as it is sensitive to fresh biomass and active photosynthetic radiation. This area is highly sensitive to the reflectance of healthy and stressed plants and turns images from simple ground photographs into a powerful tool for monitoring and timely action on irrigation, pest management, and preliminary estimation of productivity per unit area under cultivation.

‘With the AgroDigiRise project we, as farmers, have the opportunity to acquire new knowledge and apply new technologies on a broad scale. Our goal is a modern digital and resource-efficient future’, Kostadin Kostadinov, Chairman of the Board of the National Agricultural Agency, welcomed the initiative.

TechnoLogica has many years of experience in the agricultural sector — the software company has developed and maintains the Integrated Administration and Control System (IACS), which enables payments to be made under the area and livestock aid schemes. The company is a partner of Airbus and has access to the latest generation of satellite systems with 30 cm resolution, whose data is updated twice daily and is much more reliable than that captured from an aircraft.