Apple Production: Smarter Planning in Action
May 13 marked another Virtual Open Day, held in collaboration with our pilot partner Abaco, as the STELAR project enters its final phase. This session focused on showcasing results from the Melavì use case – one of Italy’s leading cooperatives in apple production – and highlighted the benefits of data-led agronomy for orchard planning and management.
This was the second Open Day in the Abaco series. During the first session, we presented a use case centred on viticulture. This time, the focus was more specific: understanding the vocational potential for apple growing.
Why Vocationality Matters in Orchard Planning
Why is this important? Because unlike many crops, apple orchards are a long-term commitment. Once trees are planted, they remain in place for years. Making early decisions based on incomplete information can lead to lost time, reduced yields, and resource inefficiencies.
Marco Bonfigli, Project Manager at Abaco, opened the session with a welcome note, emphasising the day’s focus on vocationality – that is, how to determine whether a plot of land is truly suited to apple growing. Through studies conducted within STELAR, the team developed a method to assess key parameters: soil composition, climate, existing land conditions, and how all these influence production results over time.
How can growers better assess long-term viability before even planting a tree? That is precisely what this Open Day aimed to explore. The data-driven approach goes beyond maps and intuition, enabling more accurate evaluations of planting sites and helping growers make more informed decisions.
An Overview of the STELAR Project
Dimitris Skoutas, STELAR’s coordinator from the Athena Research Centre, gave a technical overview of the project’s scope. He explained how the consortium of nine international partners contributed their knowledge to build a flexible and collaborative digital environment. The Knowledge Lake Management System (KLMS) – the project’s core platform – was introduced as a solution designed to manage metadata more effectively and streamline workflows in AI-based data pipelines.
He also presented the digital tools that now support a range of activities including data discovery, annotation, comparison, and interlinking. He concluded with a snapshot of the different pilot applications deployed throughout the project, of which Melavì is a standout example.
Suitability Analysis for Resilient Apple Production
Simone Parisi, Data Scientist at Abaco, then walked attendees through the Melavì use case in more detail. His session included the presentation of tools and analyses that directly support apple cultivation. These covered suitability assessments in the face of climate risks, late frost damage modelling, the impact of summer heat, and the classification of values connected to land potential.
Several datasets were integrated for this work: production data from apple orchards in Meleti, climate data from the Melavì weather station network, and newly developed thermal and rainfall clusters. The session also highlighted how this information was used to construct a comprehensive local dataset for analysing critical temperatures and seasonal extremes.
The outcome? A more refined understanding of where and how to plant apple orchards for long-term sustainability, productivity, and resilience. As a practical application, this kind of analysis supports both climate adaptation and food security by reducing the vulnerability of apple production to increasingly volatile weather conditions.
Abaco’s work within STELAR not only provides a clear view of site suitability but also shows how localised data, when correctly processed, can offer valuable insight at scale.
Missed the event? The full recording is available below.
