Work Plan

WP1 focuses on assessing end-users’ requirements following the co-creation approach, while participating in the design and evaluation of the developed products, tools and strategies throughout the project life-time. End-users will also evaluate the features of the demonstrated IPM system in the pilot areas.

WP2 focuses on the development of a DSS for the prediction of grape downy mildew, apple scab and Alternaria leaf blight of carrots based on agro-climatic, pathogen biological cycle algorithms, users’ testimonies and on automatic in-field disease detection. A portable advanced detection system for in-field localization and monitoring of the selected diseases will be developed. The detection system is based on advanced optical technologies, including hyper spectral imaging and state of the art machine learning techniques.

WP3 deals with the development of novel sustainable IPM strategies, to be applied as preventive or therapeutic control methods for the selected plant diseases both at experimental and commercial scale. Several biological and chemical intervention strategies will be tested experimentally to expand the range of available tools and the best performing options will be optimized for the optimum application strategy to be pilot tested.

WP4 brings together technological advancement to primarily define optimal spray configuration and parameters for the different crop-disease combinations and reduce spray drift while applying PPPs. These findings together with different variable rate application technologies will be used to develop three smart sprayers for each disease/crop combination. The development and optimization of innovative spraying technologies will be a very significant improvement over the current state of technology.

WP5 is the phase of OPTIMA project that will receive all the components of the IPM system and evaluate them separately and as a whole. The DSS and the disease detection system will be tested in three selected pilot areas, while the efficacy of selected synthetic and bio-PPPs will be evaluated as well. The smart sprayers for each crop will be tested to quantify the improvements on deposition, coverage and drift reduction in comparison to conventional sprayers, at commercial fields. Finally, all components of the IPM system as a whole will be tested in-field and compared with conventional crop protection methods.

WP6 focuses on performing an extended Life-Cycle Assessment (LCA) combined with Human and Environmental Risk Assessment (HERA) using a Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA) to identify and quantify the human health, environmental and socio-economic impacts and risks of treatments of the selected crops, comparing the conventional with the proposed IPM crop protection system.

WP7 covers the dissemination, communication and exploitation strategy for achieving high visibility of the OPTIMA project results and enable fast exploitation of the developed products.

WP8 is the project management aiming to achieve smooth evolution of the project regarding technical coordination and monitoring, efficient communication, financial and administrative issues, and appropriate data management.

WP9 sets out the ‘ethics requirements’ that the project must comply with. OPTIMA ethics requirements are associated with three categories, namely (i) Humans, (ii) Protection of personal data and (iii)Environmental protection and safety