UFRO leads international innovation project to mitigate impacts of climate change on fruit growing
HUB Smart Fruit-ALC is called the only project that managed to award Chile in the international call Agtech 2019 that was carried out by the technical agency FONTAGRO of the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), aimed at promoting intelligent solutions in innovation for agriculture, within the framework climate change.
The initiative is led by the University of La Frontera, an institution that will generate a Regional Innovation Platform between Chile, Costa Rica and Argentina. The project is directed by Dr. Alejandra Ribera, director of the Center for Fruticultura of the Faculty of Agricultural and Forestry Sciences, with the participation of researchers from the Laboratory of Satellite Remote Sensing of the Faculty of Engineering and Sciences.
“Only six initiatives will be developed in Latin America, one of them is HUB Smart Fruit-ALC, a project that responds to the strategies we are developing as a university to identify the international potential of our research and visualize ourselves beyond the regional or national impact, and we have the expertise to execute global impact projects, ”said UFRO Innovation Director Franklin Valdebenito Godoy, a unit that has promoted the internationalization of UFRO capabilities, through its Connecting Program.
MULTIACTORS
The international coordinator of the Connecting Program, Janina Hanswillemenke, said that the relevance of the HUB Smart Fruit-ALC project is that “it incorporates multiactors that come from the academy, from research centers, small producers, public services and entrepreneurs. It will be an international collaboration network that will impact the entire value chain of small fruit producers in Latin America and the Caribbean. That is its great value, ”said Hanswillemenke.
Costa Rica and Chile will lead the activities of technological development, validation, training and transfer, under the coordination of the University of La Frontera and the University of Costa Rica. The capacities will be complemented with the know-how of the Agricultural Research Institute (INIA), and the University of Talca. For its part, the University of Buenos Aires, Argentina, will play the role of knowledge transfer based on its experiences of technological applications in small agriculture.
THREE STAGES
The project director points out that HUB Smart Fruit-ALC contemplates three stages of implementation, the first is the conformation of the Hub, an international collaboration network that will promote the use and development of intelligent solutions based on remote sensing, which allow mitigating the effects of climate change. Costa Rica, for example, reports a water deficit of up to 50%, similarly in Chile, and specifically in the La Araucanía region, the deficit reached 70% during the 2019 summer period.
“The project also includes the development of OpenFruit software, with the purpose of effectively bringing precision agriculture technology to small producers and fruit consultants in the region. This tool will support agricultural management decision making by promoting the use of resources efficiently in areas of fertility, phytosanitary status and irrigation, ”adds Dr. Alejandra Ribera.
Thirdly, and considering the large digital gaps in the study areas, collective construction will be promoted between the different actors in the design and implementation phases of the tool. Together with this, an entrepreneurial ecosystem will be promoted that will link entrepreneurs with the HUB SmartFruit-ALC, in order to promote the development of new Agtech solutions based on the data generated in OpenFruit, contributing to the sustainability and scalability of the proposal.
POSITIVE IMPACT ON THE VALUE CHAIN
All this will positively impact the value chains of regional fruit growing in the Southern Cone and the Caribbean. The data generated by OpenFruit will allow agricultural service providers to access early information to adjust their agronomic advice; input suppliers refine the product offer aimed at the family fruit systems, thanks to timely knowledge of the needs of the fruit grower.
It will also allow fruit exporting companies to better program their technical and logistics assistance; that Agtech entrepreneurs develop solutions that address business opportunities with a strong sustainable technological component; and that governments and educational and research institutions strengthen agricultural innovation systems given the impact that this generates in the fight against poverty and the sustainable use of natural resources.
The idea is to promote technological solutions based on precision agriculture to strengthen the sustainability and competitiveness of fruit family systems in Latin America and the Caribbean, considering the global challenges facing climate change.
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