Aim

OchraVine Control is a joint Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions Research and Innovation Staff Exchange (RISE) project that will develop a strong partnership involving 8 partners from 4 European countries (France, Greece, Italy, United Kingdom), with different technical backgrounds from the academic and non-academic sectors (SMEs).

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    Greece

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    France

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    Italy

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    United Kingdom

The overarching objective of this RISE project is to form an international and inter-sectoral network of organisations working on a joint research programme in the fields of agriculture and smart information technology. The execution of the project and the knowledge sharing will be based on secondments (exchanges) of research and innovation staff with an in-built return mechanism strengthening collaborative research among different countries and sectors. OchraVine Control will exploit complementary and synergistic competences of the participating organizations, enable strong networking activities, organize workshops and conferences in order to facilitate the sharing of knowledge, and help in new skills acquisition and career development for the research and innovation staff members that will be seconded among the academic and non-academic partners. OchraVine Control results will offer an integrated solution to different sectors and consumers and its applications will be easily implemented by the end users.

This study through the proposed research and technology actions aims at creating an integrated management ICT based smart model system at pre- and post-harvest level to control Aspergillus infection and OTA in vine cultivation by combining epidemiological data, biological and chemical management strategies, OTA sensors and precision agriculture tools. The prevention of growth and colonization of mycotoxigenic fungi in their hosts constitute the most effective strategy for the control of mycotoxins in various products.

The prevention could be achieved with the knowledge of the critical limits of the different epidemiological factors that contribute to the spread of the fungal growth and OTA biosynthesis and with the use of a combination of chemical and biological means to control Aspergillus spp. The project aims to generate new knowledge and a new ICT technological platform (OchraVine Control DSS) with the evaluation of modern tools for integrated management based on biological, chemical and molecular control of the responsible mycotoxigenic fungi. This project aims to establish and adopt an innovative and integrated precision agriculture management approach for OTA mitigation in grape chain.

Such an integrated holistic study has never been conducted in Europe in an extensive scale and it is expected to contribute considerably in the development of SMEs and industries involved in vine value chain products in combination to academic knowledge enhancement. The project will also reduce consumers’ exposure in high levels of OTA by decreasing them in grape derived products increasing their quality and safety. OchraVine Control will effectively predict, monitor and reduce the incidence of OTA in grapes-wine-raisins.