Protecting olive groves from fruit flies

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Source: CCTV.com | 12-17-2008 13:44

Fruit flies are the bane of olive grove owners in Croatia.

Now the University of Zagreb has teamed up with Siemens to develop a method of tracking the flies.

The sensors collect data from their environment, process it and then transfer the information to other sensor hubs in the network, and to a central computer.(CCTV.com)

The Olive fruit fly is the most persistent pest of olive trees. They damage the fruit and cause them to fall off the trees prematurely.

A team of experts in Croatia is working on a research project called "Maslinet", which will apply wireless sensor networks to agriculture.

The sensors collect data from their environment, process it and then transfer the information to other sensor hubs in the network, and to a central computer.

Prof. Vedran Bilas, Zagreb University, said, "We take a high resolution photograph of a fly. It is then processed locally, at the sensor hub itself. From this we will know whether there are other flies in the trap and how many of them there are at any given moment. Parts of the photograph are compressed and then communicated with the ZigBee protocol to the local server, which is located nearby."

From the computer analysis, it is possible to distinguish between the harmless male olive fruit flies and the dangerous female specimens.

Energy saving is achieved when the sensors go into sleep mode. The local server also uses power from solar cells.

Experts say during the next two years the technology will be refined.

Stanislav Janjac, Engineer Siemens Inc., Zagreb, said, "We have two objectives for the next two years. One is to stabilize the technology being used in olive-groves. And the other one is to implement joint projects with other partners in order to interpret the data."

The collected data also includes details about local temperature, humidity and solar radiation and will be available on the Internet for olive grove owners.

This will make production much easier, automatic watering more feasible and the use of pesticides more economic.

Editor:Zhang Pengfei