News

Kick-off AGRARSENSE project

• Wednesday, 1 February 2023

A new project takes agricultural and forestry related productivity to the next level. The consortium, which includes TUDelft, will develop European state-of-the-art technologies in electronic components and systems for future needs, building European resilience in critical sectors and strongly contribute to sustainability targets and climate change mitigation.

Adequate food and its security is a global challenge, impacted by rapidly compounding effects of climate change, supply chains, human labour shortage and political and military aggression to name a few. We need transparent and improved productivity of agriculture and forestry and easy access to state-of-the-art technological innovation and automation. Also, more sustainable fertilizers and irrigation use is additionally key to saving the climate. Hence, European resilience calls for efficient technological solutions ranging from hardware to holistic data management.

Focus on food security, improved productivity of agriculture and forestry

The AGRARSENSE project, launched in January 2023, responds to these needs by developing technologies for seven different use cases that represent seven different angles on today’s European agriculture and forestry: Greenhouses, vertical farming, precision viticulture, agriculture robotics, forestry machinery and optimal soil management and fertilization as well as agriculture related water management. The electronics components and systems related technology R&D includes e.g., plant, soil, and water sensors and related integration, as well as software, connectivity, and data management solutions. Safety, security, and reliability R&D as well as autonomous movement and robotics platforms pave the way to full commercial utilization of the project outcomes.
 

AGRARSENSE brings together a total of 52 partners from 15 EU countries

Within the Dutch-led Greenhouse use case and with the other European partners, the TUDelft will focus on two technology development activities. One is the development of a 2D material-based VOC sensor that aims at sniffing out plant diseases to enable better prediction of crop health. This research, led by Sten Vollebregt, will focus both on the development of the sensor platform and the packaging of the sensor to result in a reliable demonstrator. The second activity, led by Qinwen Fan, will focus on developing power-efficient electronic drivers that will be used in, among others, greenhouse robotics.