Key Milestone: Deployment of Poles in the Italian Pilot

In July, our partners at INL installed two multi-sensing poles at ECORFARM, a leading agricultural cooperative and producer in Sicily, Italy. This deployment extends the TEAPOTS’ pilot activities beyond Greece, bringing advanced monitoring technologies to Italian fields.

The poles are strategically positioned across two cultivation areas: one dedicated to the vineyard and the other to peach tree cultivation. Each unit is equipped with a suite of state-of-the-art instruments, including:

• Two spectrometers for biomass analysis

• A camera mounted at three meters to capture scheduled daily images of crops

• A soil moisture and light sensor 

• A weather station to record key climate variables

• Solar panels and batteries ensure autonomous, off-grid operation

• GSM-based connectivity for cloud transmission of data every 15 minutes

All data collected from these instruments are continuously transmitted to a dedicated digital platform. Through advanced AI algorithms and image processing techniques, the system enables:

• Continuous monitoring of biomass growth across crops

• Accurate estimation of available agricultural waste for valorisation

In the coming months, the TEAPOTS project will extend this initiative by deploying low-cost single-camera systems across multiple sites and crop types. This will enhance data collection, refine AI-driven waste estimation models, and strengthen the project’s contribution to sustainable biomass monitoring at scale.