Between March 31st-April 3rd, Council for the Research in Agriculture (CREA) organized the short-term joint Staff Training Event within the Erasmus Plus project “IMPLEMENT4.0”: Integrated Management of Pesticides and Liable Exposure with Machinery Executing Needed Treatments”.
On the first day of the event, the staff from OMU (Turkey) had a visit to the research centre of CREA in Montelibretti Rome and learnt about the center’s research activities related to responses of crops to climate change, circular economy and use of digital technologies.
On the second day, the team visited the headquarters of CREA in Rome and meet with the Director General Stefano Vaccari and had a fruitful discussion about similarities in the research applied to digital agriculture by CREA and OMU.
Day 3 was dedicated to the AgriUmbria National Agriculture Exhibition, hosted by the CIA Umbria. During this event, the project partners from Italy and Turkey enjoyed the exhibition while meeting agricultural machinery manufacturers from Italy specialized in precisiontechnologies such as ISOBUS – a company that offers unique technological solutions in compatibility between tractors, accessory equipment, and agricultural software. The IMPLMENT4.0 project leaflet was handed out by the project team at the event to all interested and acquired a good deal of contacts for future collaboration opportunities.

The IMPLMENT4.0 Multiplier Event and Final Conference ‘Integrated Management of Pesticides and Liable Exposure with Machinery Executing Needed Treatments’ took place in Ankara, turkey on 26th of April 2022. About 95 participants from Turkey, Spain and Italy were welcomed by the IMPLEMENT4.0 project team. This conference presented the final results of the IMPLEMENT4.0 project. Agriculture experts and specialists in digital and smart technologies, agriculture students and practitioners had a chance to know about the current state-of-the-art of smart agriculture in Europe and discuss the challenges and opportunities for sustainable digital future for European agriculture.
After participants were welcomed by the project coordinator Benal Yurtly from the Ondokuz Mayis University (Turkey), the day started with presentations by the project partners Juan Carlos Muñoz Flores and Massimo Canalicchio from Spain and Italy, who focused on the ongoing developments in digital agriculture in the Spain and Italy and also spoke about their role in the IMPLMENT4.0 project. They emphasized the practical approach of the IMPLEMENT4.0 training materials that were designed to improve functional knowledge of digital solutions among agricultural professionals, mainly machinery operators and other agricultural workforce with digital competency based on the best practices from Italy, Spain and Turkey.
After the lunch break the project team met for the final project meeting to discuss the pending tasks. The partners shared their reflections and insights on the project’s shortcomings and achievements combined with an evaluation of their experiences throughout the project implementation period.
The conference was successfully wrapped up and closed with words of thank-yous from each partner expressing gratitude for cooperation and giving positive feedback for future collaboration.
The event was streamed live by the local media and also on project social media (Twitter and Facebook).

The Spanish multiplier event of the IMPLEMENT 4.0 project ‘Integrated Management of Pesticides and Liable Exposure with Machinery Executing Needed Treatments’, corresponding to the Erasmus+ program took place on Thursday 28th April 2022 in the IFEJA premises of Jaén. During this event, speakers Francisco Elvira and Ignacio Rojas presented the results of the project on new developments in digital agriculture applied to hydraulic and hydro-pneumatic sprayers were presented, based on the experiences gained in the different participating countries: Turkey, Italy, and Spain.
In addition, the projects developed in recent years by COAG Jaén were disseminated along with promotion of the Erasmus+ program. Subsequently, a section on integrated production was presented, investigating the needs of the crops and the measures contemplated to comply with the regulations on integrated pest and disease management. Finally, another section reviewed many of the innovations and technologies that are having an impact on the development of precision agriculture, mainly in the field of permanent crop management. Technologies such as drones, variable dosage, patch application, geolocation systems, lidar systems, satellite images, automatic systems, sensors, decision support systems, autonomous driving systems, robots, etc. were reviewed. Finally, there was a Q&A section, with interesting contributions to crop protection new technologies and European agricultural policies. This preceded an informal meeting in which the 34 participants were able to talk over a cocktail held in the same IFEJA facilities. The participants were mainly farmers linked to COAG Jaén, however, other representatives from the agriculture sector also took part in the event.