Spain Tests Artificial Intelligence to Manage Fly

For the sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year, Spain’s agri­cul­tural min­istry has launched a pilot exper­i­ment using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence to pre­dict the evo­lu­tion of the olive fly.

The exper­i­ment uses data col­lected on the olive fly by the Andalusian Plant Protection and Information Network (RAIF), a project of the Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Rural Development. The data are ana­lyzed and fed into an arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence model that can pre­dict the fly’s behav­ior up to four weeks in advance by using machine learn­ing tech­niques.

This method pro­vides a valu­able tool for olive farm­ers to bet­ter man­age the pest by reveal­ing the areas and dates of the great­est risk of infes­ta­tion. This also allows for the more effi­cient plan­ning and design­ing of mea­sures to con­trol the pest. The aim of this pre­dic­tive model using arti­fi­cial intel­li­gence is to ulti­mately improve pro­duc­tion and reduce the use of pes­ti­cides.

Those ben­e­fit­ing from the pilot project are Integrated Production Associations (APIs) made up of olive grow­ers work­ing in 10 munic­i­pal­i­ties in the province of Jaén and nine in the province of Cordoba in south­ern Spain. This includes 12 APIs made up of a total num­ber of 1,568 farm­ers with a total of 9,000 hectares of olive groves.

The RAIF net­work col­lects data and pro­vides infor­ma­tion on the phy­tosan­i­tary sta­tus of the main crops of the Andalusian region thanks to close to 700 field tech­ni­cians and 4,621 con­trol sta­tions located in each province. There are also 150 weather sta­tions record­ing infor­ma­tion on the cli­matic sit­u­a­tion in each crop area. Meanwhile, tech­ni­cians posted at each con­trol sta­tion take note of poten­tial pests or dis­eases.

Each week, the asso­ci­a­tions of grow­ers will receive infor­ma­tion pre­dict­ing the per­cent­age of their crop sus­cep­ti­ble to the olive fly so that they can bet­ter plan pest man­age­ment for that week. In return, the APIs are expected to report back with their obser­va­tions so that the pre­dic­tive model can be fur­ther improved.

The olive fly is a species of fruit fly and a dreaded pest for olive grow­ers across the Mediterranean region because of the severe dam­age it can cause to their crops. The pest was partly to blame for poor yields dur­ing the 2014 – 2015 har­vest sea­son which saw pro­duc­tion decrease by more than 50 per­cent in Spain and Italy, the world’s biggest olive pro­duc­ers.

• Euractiv


• UPO