Salvatore Filippo Di Gennaro

• PhD
• Researcher at Italian National Research Council

Technological progress has created a fertile substrate for a new phase of agricultural modernization in terms of cost-effectiveness, adaptability and flexibility, providing innovative tools for the decision-making process. With the initiative "Officina Ibimet", a group of researchers and technicians of the Institute of Biometeorology of the Nationa...

In viticulture, accurate yield estimation is crucial for enhancing vineyard management and improving the quality of commercial grapes. However, traditional monitoring methods, which rely on visual assessments or destructive sampling, face significant limitations, including subjectivity and lengthy processing times. Additionally, these methods often...

The viticulture sector, spanning over 7.3 million hectares worldwide, plays a crucial economic role but faces challenges such as labor shortages, rising production costs, market competition, and climate change stresses. Addressing these issues requires monitoring the spatial and temporal variability in vineyard productivity. Traditional ground-base...

The growing demand for grapevine planting materials, due to growing global viticulture, is promoting research studies to improve vineyard sustainability. In greenhouse nurseries, peat is the most common growing medium component used although is an expensive and non-renewable material. Indeed, the reduction of peat exploitation is receiving great at...

Since 2010, more and more farmers have been using remote sensing data from unmanned aerial vehicles, which have a high spatial–temporal resolution, to determine the status of their crops and how their fields change. Imaging sensors, such as multispectral and RGB cameras, are the most widely used tool in vineyards to characterize the vegetative deve...

Yield prediction is a significant factor in optimizing orchard management and can help to improve fruit quality in woody crops. Having accurate and timely yield predictions is required for making harvest and market plans. It provides relevant information about orchard variability necessary for planning fertilization, pruning, and water management i...

Crop models fed by seasonal forecasts to deliver yield forecasts are becoming a valuable tool to tackle food production shocks and food price spikes triggered by climate change and extreme events. However, to what extent seasonal climate prediction can be coupled to crop models in an effective climate service to provide durum wheat yield forecastin...

Grapevine simulation models are mostly used to estimate plant development, growth and yield at plot scale. However, the spatial variability of pedologic and micro-climatic conditions can influence vine growth, leading to a sub-field heterogeneity in plant vigor and final yield that may be better estimated through the assimilation of high spatial re...

Citation: Sousa, J.J.; Toscano, P.; Matese, A.; Di Gennaro, S.F.; Berton, A.; Gatti, M.; Poni, S.; Pádua, L.; Hruška, J.; Morais, R.; et al. UAV-Based Hyperspectral Monitoring Using Push-Broom and Snapshot Sensors: A Multisite Assessment for Precision Viticulture Applications. Sensors 2022, 22, 6574.

Over the last 50 years, many approaches for extracting plant key parameters from remotely sensed data have been developed, especially in the last decade with the spread of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in agriculture. Multispectral sensors are very useful for the elaboration of common vegetation indices (VIs), however, the spectral accuracy and r...

Vineyard classification is an important process within viticulture-related decision-support systems. Indeed, it improves grapevine vegetation detection, enabling both the assessment of vineyard vegetative properties and the optimization of in-field management tasks. Aerial data acquired by sensors coupled to unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) may be u...

Analysis of the spectral response of vegetation using optical sensors for non-destructive remote monitoring represents a key element for crop monitoring. Considering the wide presence on the market of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAVs) based commercial solutions, the need emerges for clear information on the performance of these products to guide the e...

The need to rely on accurate information about the wood biomass available in riparian zones under management, inspired the land reclamation authority of southern Tuscany to develop a research based on the new remote sensing technologies. With this aim, a series of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) flight campaigns flanked by ground-data collection were...

Appropriate characterization of intra-parcel variability is a key element for the effective application of precision farming techniques. Nowadays there are many platforms available to end users differing for pixel spatial resolution and the type of acquisition (remote or proximal). A challenging aspect pertaining to remote sensing image acquisition...

Forest sustainable management aims to maintain the income of woody goods for companies, together with preserving non-productive functions as a benefit for the community. Due to the progress in platforms and sensors and the opening of the dedicated market, unmanned aerial vehicle–remote sensing (UAV–RS) is improving its key role in the forestry sect...

Remote sensing for precision agriculture has been strongly fostered by the launches of the European Space Agency Sentinel-2 optical imaging constellation, enabling both academic and private services for redirecting farmers towards a more productive and sustainable management of the agroecosystems. As well as the freely and open access policy adopte...

Natural, semi-natural, and planted forests are a key asset worldwide, providing a broad range of positive externalities. For sustainable forest planning and management, remote sensing (RS) platforms are rapidly going mainstream. In a framework where scientific production is growing exponentially, a systematic analysis of unmanned aerial vehicle (UA...

In the last decade there has been an exponential growth of research activity on the identification of correlations between vegetational indices elaborated by UAV imagery and productive and vegetative parameters of the vine. However, the acquisition and analysis of spectral data require costs and skills that are often not sufficiently available. In...

Currently, the greatest challenge for vine growers is to improve the yield and quality of grapes by minimizing costs and environmental impacts. This goal can be achieved through a better knowledge of vineyard spatial variability. Traditional platforms such as airborne, satellite and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) solutions are useful investigation...

Background: The knowledge of vine vegetative status within a vineyard plays a key role in canopy management in order to achieve a correct vine balance and reach the final desired yield/quality. Detailed information about canopy architecture and missing plants distribution provides useful support for farmers/winegrowers to optimize canopy managemen...

Surface soil water content plays an important role in driving the exchange of latent and sensible heat between the atmosphere and land surface through transpiration and evaporation processes, regulating key physiological processes affecting plants growth. Given the high impact of water scarcity on yields, and of irrigated agriculture on the overall...

The agricultural and forestry sector is constantly evolving, also through the increased use of precision technologies including Remote Sensing (RS). Remotely biomass estimation (WaSfM) in wood production forests is already debated in the literature, but there is a lack of knowledge in quantifying pruning residues from canopy management. The aim of...

Several remote sensing technologies have been tested in precision viticulture to characterize vineyard spatial variability, from traditional aircraft and satellite platforms to recent unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Imagery processing is still a challenge due to the traditional row-based architecture, where the inter-row soil provides a high to fu...

AgroSat è una piattaforma gratuita e accessibile da qualsiasi dispositivo in grado di supportare l'agricoltore nella gestione dell'acqua, dei fitofarmaci e dei fertilizzanti attraverso tecniche di agricoltura di precisione. ① Trova il campo • Colore naturale • Stato coltura • Resa potenziale • Stress idrico • Concime ② Disegna i confini ③ Scegli la...

The availability of big data in agriculture, enhanced by free remote sensing data and on-board sensor-based data, provides an opportunity to understand within-field and year-to-year variability and promote precision farming practices for site-specific management. This paper explores the performance in durum wheat yield estimation using different te...

One of the key steps that would lead winegrowers to implement precision viticulture as a management tool would be the clear demonstration of the agronomic and oenological significance of the zones delineated within a vineyard based, totally or partially, on remote-acquired information. To perform this analysis, it is necessary to compare image-deri...

The application of spectral sensors mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) assures high spatial and temporal resolutions. This research focused on canopy reflectance for cultivar recognition in an olive grove. The ability in cultivar recognition of 14 vegetation indices (VIs) calculated from reflectance patterns (green 520-600 , red 630-690 and...

Yield prediction is a key factor to optimize vineyard management and achieve the desired grape quality. Classical yield estimation methods, which consist of manual sampling within the field on a limited number of plants before harvest, are time-consuming and frequently insufficient to obtain representative yield data. Non-invasive machine vision me...

Technical resources are currently supporting and enhancing the ability of precision agriculture techniques in crop management. The accuracy of prescription maps is a key aspect to ensure a fast and targeted intervention. In this context, remote sensing acquisition by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) is one of the most advanced platforms to collect im...

A low-cost air quality station has been developed for real-time monitoring of main atmospheric pollutants. Sensors for CO, CO2, NO2, O3, VOC, PM2.5 and PM10 were integrated on an Arduino Shield compatible board. As concerns PM2.5 and PM10 sensors, the station underwent a laboratory calibration and later a field validation. Laboratory calibration ha...

High spatial ground resolution and highly flexible and timely control due to reduced planning time are the strengths of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platforms for remote sensing applications. These characteristics make them ideal especially in the medium–small agricultural systems typical of many Italian viticulture areas of excellence. UAV can be...

In recent years, optical sensing techniques have been widely spread since they allow the non-invasive evaluation of water deficit stress in a timely fashion. In this study, innovative services and support systems to farmers for optimising irrigation, scheduling and practices were tested in two vineyards located in Usini and Arzachena (Sardinia, Ita...

AGROSAT : una piattaforma per l'Agricoltura di Precisione a supporto del settore cerealicolo

In light of climate change and its impacts on plant physiology, optimizing water usage and improving irrigation practices play a crucial role in crop management. In recent years, new optical remote sensing techniques have become widespread since they allow a non-invasive evaluation of plant water stress dynamics in a timely manner. Unmanned aerial...

Deforestation and forest degradation cause the deterioration of resources and ecosystem services. However, there are still no operational indicators to measure forest status, especially for forest degradation. In the present study, we analysed the thermal response number (TRN, calculated by daily total net radiation divided by daily temperature ran...

In the context of plant breeding, high-throughput phenotyping is an assessment of plant phenotypes on a scale and with a level of speed and precision not achievable with traditional methods, through the application of emerging technologies such as automation and robotics, new sensors, and imaging technologies (hardware and software). In the present...

This study focused on the impact of vine vigour on Sangiovese grapes and wines, applying a high-resolution remote sensing technique by an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) platform to identify vigour at the single vine level within a vineyard. A factorial field experiment was established combining two vigour classes (low and high) and two bunch positio...

The progressive impact of global warming on viticulture requires enhancing knowledge of vine responses to summer abiotic stresses. The aim of this research is an evaluation of heat and radiative stress effects in terms of temperature at cluster and canopy level. A high-resolution thermal monitoring approach is presented, which combines remote and p...

New remote sensing technologies have provided unprecedented results in vineyard monitoring. The aim of this work was to evaluate different sources of images and processing methodologies to describe spatial variability of spectral-based and canopy-based vegetation indices within a vineyard, and their relationship with productive and qualitative vine...

An integrated monitoring platform was developed for real-time monitoring of air pollution and traffic flows in urban areas. The air quality monitoring unit, integrating the “Arduino” open-source technology with low-cost and high-resolution sensors, collects concentrations of CO, NO2 and CO2. The traffic monitoring device, equipped with a camera sen...

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or remotely piloted aircraft systems are new platforms that have been increasingly used over the last decade in Europe to collect data for forest research, thanks to the miniaturization and cost reduction of GPS receivers, inertial navigation system, computers, and, most of all, sensors for remote sensing. In this re...

Biomass is one of the most important parameters in order for the farmer to choose the best canopy management within the field and it can be estimated using plant canopy height. In combination with a non-vegetation ground model, plant height can be obtained by quantifying the height of a canopy using crop surface models (CSMs). A modified Mikrokopte...

Thermal imaging can become a readily usable tool for crop agricultural water management, since it allows a quick determination of canopy surface temperature that, as linked to transpiration, can give an idea of crop water status. In the last years, the resolution of thermal imaging systems has increased and its weight decreased, fostering their imp...

Foliar symptoms of grapevine leaf stripe disease (GLSD, a disease within the esca complex) are linked to drastic alteration of photosynthetic function and activation of defense responses in affected grapevines several days before the appearance of the first visible symptoms on leaves. The present study suggests a methodology to investigate the rela...

Il continuo sviluppo tecnologico indirizza la moderna viticoltura verso una crescita rapida, grazie alla disponibilità di strumenti e metodologie per l'acquisizione e l'analisi dei dati sempre più performanti in termini di precisione dei dati, miniaturizzazione dei dispositivi e contenimento dei costi. Un esempio evidente è lo sviluppo e diffusione...

The paper describes the development and application of a low-cost and open-source system for agrometeorological monitoring. The system is based on the Arduino platform and agrometeorological sensors. Data are transmitted using a WiFi Shield and GSM/GPRS Shield. The system is equipped with different agrometeorological sensors: air temperature and re...

La permanenza di attività microbiologica nei liquidi alimentari è una delle criticità dei processi di produzione, dato il notevole rischio di sviluppo non solo di metaboliti con impatto negativo sulle proprietà organolettiche e qualitative, ma soprattutto per il potenziale rilascio di composti tossici per la salute umana. Il processo di stabilizzaz...

In this paper, a new method to produce accurate vigour maps using a vine row automatic detection process is presented. It has been applied to 5 cm ground resolution multispectral aerial images (NIR, red, green). NDVI index has been calculated for pre-processed images, obtained by the selection of pixels that represent vine rows, masking non-vine ve...

Winemaking is a dynamic process where microbiological and chemical effects may strongly diversify the products of the same vineyard and even between wine vats. This high variability causes an increase in work in terms of control and process management. As well as for Precision Viticulture, the winemaking process therefore requires a site-specific a...

Precision viticulture aims to maximize the oenological potential of vineyards. This is especially true in regions where the high quality standards of wine production justify the adoption of site-specific management practices to simultaneously increase both quality and yield. The introduction of new technologies for supporting vineyard management al...

Precision Viticulture is experiencing substantial growth thanks to the availability of improved and cost-effective instruments and methodologies for data acquisition and analysis, such as Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV), that demonstrated to compete with traditional acquisition platforms, such as satellite and aircraft, due to low operational costs,...

Winemaking is a dynamic process, where microbiological and chemical effects may strongly differentiate products from the same vineyard and even between wine vats. This high variability means an increase in work in terms of control and process management. The winemaking process therefore requires a site-specific approach in order to optimize cellar...

A new wireless sensor network (WSN), called CrossVit, and based on MEMSIC products, has been tested for two growing seasons in two vineyards in Italy. The aims are to evaluate the monitoring performances of the new WSN directly in the vineyard and collect air temperature, air humidity and solar radiation data to support vineyard management practice...

Demands are increasing worldwide for geospatial information and geodata accessibility to support vineyard management using new technology for precision farming. The rapid evolution of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and Geographical Science offers enormous potential for the development of optimized solutions for distributed information...

Meteorological parameters have a crucial influence on grapevines (Vitis vinifera L.), affecting production quantity and quality. Most commonly used bioclimatic indices are not appropriate to represent intra-vineyard micrometeorological variability and in particular the sub-daily dynamics that are known to be important in grape maturation processes....

Background and Aims Malolactic fermentation (MLF) is a metabolic process promoted in wine by lactic acid bacteria, which can improve wine quality. The MLF, however, must be properly monitored and handled in a timely manner as the bacteria remaining in the wine can produce off-flavours. This work describes the Wireless Sensor Bung (WSB), a system fo...

Multispectral remote sensing using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) is a promising new technique for precision viticulture because of its flexibility of use and limited cost. On the other hand, nondestructive methods to control vine vegetation status and ripening level of bunches are fundamental to produce high quality grape and top quality wines. He...

An unmanned aerial vehicle (''VIPtero'') was assembled and tested with the aim of developing a flexible and powerful tool for site-specific vineyard management. The system comprised a six-rotor aerial platform capable of flying autonomously to a prede-termined point in space, and of a pitch and roll compensated multi-spectral camera for vegetation...

The availability of new tools to detect and monitor vine health status was under evaluation in a vineyard heavily affected by grapevine leaf stripe disease (GLSD). The vineyard, located in Tuscany, had been surveyed for foliar symptoms each year from 2003 to 2012; each vine was mapped and classified for foliar symptom appearance and disease severit...

Background and Aims: The goal of this study was to investigate the relationships between NDVI values at different phenological stages and measurements of grape parameters at two different harvest dates. Methods and Results: The research was done on a Sangiovese vineyard in Central Italy. Over four seasons, airborne NDVI measurements acquired betwee...

Demands are increasing worldwide for geospatial information and geodata accessibility to support vineyard management using new technology for precision farming. The rapid evolution of Information Communication Technologies (ICT) and Geographical Science offers enormous potential for the development of optimized solutions for distributed information...

In the last years it has become possible to combine high spatial resolution imagery, quick turnaround times and low operational complexity and costs in order to generate useful remote sensing products for vegetation monitoring applied to viticulture and the environment. Remote sensing platforms based on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) represent a t...

The pyrolysis conversion of agricultural residues into biochar and its incorporation in agricultural soil, avoids CO2 emissions providing a safe long-term soil carbon sequestration. Furthermore, biochar application to soil seems to increase nutrient stocks in the rooting zone, to reduce nutrient leaching and to improve crop yields. This study repor...

In the last decade, wireless technologies have been increasingly applied in precision agriculture. Wireless monitoring systems in particular have been used in precision viticulture in order to understand vineyard variability, and therefore suggest appropriate management practices for improving the quality of the wines.The NAV (Network Avanzato per...