What do a robotic solution that shares information to farmers, a technology that uses AI to detect bovine mastitis at an earlier stage, and a scan for food evaluation that verifies the quality of cereals, predicts production and detects cases of fraud have in common? They were all developed by INESC TEC and nominated for the 11th edition of the Crédito Agrícola Entrepreneurship and Innovation Awards.
Nominated for the “Food and Nutrition Security” category, Pocket-Vet – an IA technology – won the first place, while Seedsight won the honourable mention “Born from Knowledge” granted by ANI (in the same category). Orioos – the robotic solution – was on the list of nominees in the “Transition and Carbon Neutrality” category.
These awards are granted annually to “reward those who move the world forward”, to identify the most innovative national projects in the areas of energy transition and carbon neutrality, response to biotic and abiotic stresses, valorisation of endogenous resources and food and nutritional security.
But what is the main goal of the award-winning technology? Rui Martins, researcher at INESC TEC, explained: “it is a laboratory system based on intelligent spectroscopy. As it does not use reagents, nor does it need laboratory conditions, it allows the analysis of blood and milk at the place of production, allowing the timely assessment of inflammatory conditions and the animal’s health status, with direct implications on milk quality – being one of the first applications of Point-of-Care in precision livestock.”
The systems present in Pocket-Vet were developed by the laboratories of the Centre for Robotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems and TRIBE, both at INESC TEC – in partnership with the Laboratory of Histology and Embryology of the Abel Salazar Institute of Biomedical Sciences (ICBAS-UP), veterinary experts from SVAExpLeite, Lda. and Segalab – Laboratory of Animal Health and Food Safety, members of the Associação Portuguesa de Buiatria and dairy farmers associated with the study.
Mastitis is one of the diseases that leads to higher costs in milk production; the early detection is critical to prevent its evolution and potential spread to the herd. Spectroscopy technology makes it possible to instantly determine, with a drop of blood or milk, the blood count and composition of the milk, and to diagnose a herd of 120 animals expeditiously and at very low costs.
According to Rui Martins: “the most important aspect of this award is the fact that it addresses the needs of the main target-group – with veterinarians and producers kindly volunteering their businesses to test the project’s advances. The voluntary and direct participation of end-users in the technological development process is a rare case in Portuguese research, but it is critical for a product to exist. Society’s co-participation in science is vital to improve the deep-tech impact on our lives.”
Pocket-Vet uses BB-spectral AI, a patented technology developed by INESC TEC that has been consecutively acknowledged in different use cases – namely the third place achieved in the EARTO Innovation Award – Impact Expected by the NPK * project.
Moreover, INESC TEC features a department whose main mission is the protection and licensing of technologies. Marta Vranas, from the Technology Licensing Office, believes that “winning these awards reflects the continuous effort of the Technology Licensing Office to promote the valorisation of INESC TEC technologies and reinforce the strategic importance of these initiatives in the Institute’s valorisation activities”.
Nominated in the same category, and holding an honourable mention, Seedsight ensures the safety and quality of food, tackling fraud and promoting fair trade through a unique and traceable signature of each raw material.
“The challenge we address is based on three principles,” said Joana Paiva, INESC TEC researcher and founder of the spin-off Seedsight. The first is productivity. “Everyone knows that by 2050 we will not have enough natural resources to feed everyone; hence, we seek to maximise them,” she explained. “Second, we want to provide people a healthier diet, without contaminants or pesticides. And third, we wish to contribute to sustainability, i.e., reduce water and energy consumption, as well as CO2 emissions in this industry.”
According to the researcher, the award “reinforces our mission to transform the food chain with technological solutions that promote transparency, sustainability and safety, positively impacting the future of our society.”
The competition also included Orioos, “an autonomous robot for monitoring permanent crops, namely vineyards and orchards, counting fruits and detecting diseases, sharing this information with farmers in order to promote more informed decisions”, explained André Aguiar, researcher at INESC TEC.
In practice, it drives precision agriculture by providing farmers a clear portrait of the state of their crops and helping to control phytopharmaceuticals, optimise irrigation, and plan essential processes like harvesting and disease detection. The researcher stated that the impact of the project translates into the “possibility of perceiving where there is more productivity and where there are more diseases, applying the amount of chemicals strictly necessary in those regions, carrying out a more controlled and more informed spraying tasks.”
This is not the first time that projects involving INESC TEC have won the Crédito Agrícola Entrepreneurship and Innovation Awards. The technology of the SpecTOM project and the technology developed within the scope of the Smart Trap project reached the podium during the eighth edition; in 2019, Water Percept was among the three finalists.
The researchers mentioned in this news piece are associated with INESC TEC.
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