=Paper=
{{Paper
|id=Vol-3293/paper78
|storemode=property
|title=Climate Change Impacts Mitigation Using Protective Nets and IoT Technologies in Mountainous Mediterranean Cherry Orchards: Cyprus as a Case Study - Abstract
|pdfUrl=https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper78.pdf
|volume=Vol-3293
|authors=George Adamides,Andreas Savvides,Andreas Stylianou,Sotiroula Ioannidou,Constantina Stavridou
|dblpUrl=https://dblp.org/rec/conf/haicta/AdamidesSSIS22
}}
==Climate Change Impacts Mitigation Using Protective Nets and IoT Technologies in Mountainous Mediterranean Cherry Orchards: Cyprus as a Case Study - Abstract==
<pdf width="1500px">https://ceur-ws.org/Vol-3293/paper78.pdf</pdf>
<pre>
Climate Change Impacts Mitigation Using Protective Nets and
IoT Technologies in Mountainous Mediterranean Cherry
Orchards: Cyprus as a Case Study - Abstract
George Adamides 1, Andreas Savvides 1, Andreas Stylianou 1, Sotiroula Ioannidou 1 and
Constantina Stavridou 1
1
    Agricultural Research Institute, P.O. Box 22016, 1516 Nicosia, Cyprus


                 Summary
                 The agri-food sector in Cyprus has high potential in the production of fresh fruits and nuts,
                 which are cultivated, due to climatic requirements, in the mountainous and semi-mountainous
                 areas of Troodos, covering the central part of the island. Restrictive social, economic and
                 environmental factors are leading to a steady decline in agricultural production in these areas
                 leaving this potential untapped. The aging of the rural population, depopulation, increased
                 production costs due to high dependency on external inputs (e.g., agrochemicals, fuels) and
                 highly fragmented farms, along with adverse climatic conditions that prevail in recent years,
                 cause uncertainty in fruit production.
                 The growing negative effects of climate change on the agricultural sector are undermining
                 significantly both yield and fruit quality and thus require the development and use of
                 techniques and tools capable of mitigating these effects. Among other practices, the use of
                 protective nets is one of the most effective and environmentally friendly methods, which is
                 argued that interacts positively with climatic factors and thus affects yield (i.e., prevents
                 production losses) and fruit quality.
                 The purpose of this study is to evaluate the effects of protective nets (anti-hail and anti-rain
                 nets) on a sweet cherry orchard in terms of microclimate components and related tree canopy
                 traits. To this end, Internet of Things (IoT) technologies (e.g., smart sensors) and hand-held
                 instruments have been deployed in an orchard for sensing aerial environment (solar radiation,
                 air temperature, relative humidity and wind speed), soil factors (soil temperature, moisture,
                 electrical conductivity), and canopy traits (leaf temperature and stomatal conductance).
                 Microclimate data and canopy traits from a covered and a non-covered, by protective nets, area
                 of the orchard were collected, stored, and analyzed aiming at identifying the impact of
                 protective nets on orchard microclimate and canopy traits, and evaluate the use of IoT
                 technologies as a decision support system for farmers and agronomists.
                 The first results showed that protective nets significantly shaped orchard microclimate, mainly
                 through the reduction of incident solar radiation and the change in light distribution within
                 orchard canopy. The change in orchard microclimate due to the protective nets resulted in
                 reduced reference evapotranspiration and leaf temperature on the top of the canopy. Overall,
                 this study provides evidence that the use of IoT technologies in semi-controlled environments,
                 such as orchards with protective nets, is necessary for sensing the local microenvironment and
                 provide decision support to farmers and agronomists.

                 Keywords 1
                 Internet of Things, smart sensors, agriculture, mountainous areas, orchards



Proceedings of HAICTA 2022, September 22–25, 2022, Athens, Greece
EMAIL: gadamides@ari.gov.cy (A.1); andreas.savvides@ari.gov.cy (A.2); a.stylianou@ari.gov.cy (A.3); s.ioannidou@ari.gov.cy (A.4)
constantinastavridou@ari.gov.cy (A.5)
ORCID 0000-0001-7343-8765 (A. 1); 0000-0001-7585-3313 (A. 2); 0000-0002-2611-4319 (A. 3) 0000-0002-1064-0568 (A. 4); 0000-0002-
7992-3945 (A. 5)
              ©️ 2022 Copyright for this paper by its authors.
              Use permitted under Creative Commons License Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0).
              CEUR Workshop Proceedings (CEUR-WS.org)




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