Partners of project VIRAL together on a new project

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Thanks to the consortium of the VIRAL project “VITALISING ICT RELEVANCE IN AGRICULTURAL LEARNING”, funded by the European Union through the Erasmus+ program, the Faculty of Agriculture of the University of Banja Luka is lead partner of one of the 5 projects funded under the pilot program of Ministry for Science and Techological Development, Higher Education and Information Society of Republika Srpska, “Synergy”. Through the tender proposal it is selected 5 projects that will co-finance joint projects of the scientific research community and the economy, which is a completely new approach to financing the projects of the line ministry.

Aim of the project “Improving the efficiency of plum cultivation by mechanizing work operations with the support of information technologies” is to test impact of mechanized plum cultivation in order to increase production efficiency. The use of information technologies within the project will be based on an assessment of the degree of vegetation (vegetation indexes) and determining the optimal time of pruning. Given that these are larger producers, without the use of satellite imagery and camera drones, it is difficult to determine the positions where pruning is optimally applied. The idea is to support a larger number of other activities on large production areas with information technology, wherever possible, making production safer and more efficient. Representatives of two universities from the VIRAL project consortium are participating in the project: University of Maribor and the University of Bucharest. In addition to these universities, members of the working team are representatives of the University of Belgrade and the University of North Carolina.