TALLHEDA 4th Brainstorming Visit to the University of Novi Sad!

Angeliki Milioti
Jun 10
3 min read

Updated: 1 day ago

On 28 and 29 May 2026, the University of Novi Sad Faculty of Agriculture (UNSFA) hosted the 4th Round of the TALLHEDA Brainstorming Action — a two-day intensive knowledge exchange event bringing together experts from Belgium, Greece, and Serbia under the shared theme of Digital Agriculture in Action. The event, held at the P1 venue of UNSFA, marked one of the most technically rich sessions of the project to date, featuring lectures, platform demonstrations, and field-based applications from across the TALLHEDA consortium.

The Brainstorming Actions are a cornerstone of the TALLHEDA methodology: structured bilateral and multilateral knowledge exchange visits designed to accelerate the transfer of digital agriculture expertise between leading and widening institutions, and to progressively build the research and teaching capacity of partner universities in Greece and Serbia.

Day 1 — Thursday, 28 May 2026

Following a welcome by the UNSFA local TALLHEDA team, the first day opened with a session by the Belgian partner ILVO.

Assala Bourafai (ILVO, Belgium) presented the lecture Comparing Soil Compaction Measurement Methods in SQAT (Soil Quality Analysis Tool) — an in-depth technical examination of methods for assessing soil compaction in the field, and the role of the SQAT platform in standardising and automating these measurements across different agricultural contexts. The session provided participants with a detailed understanding of how digital tools can replace or complement traditional manual soil assessment methods, with direct implications for precision agriculture and sustainability monitoring.

Smart Agro Hub (Greece) then delivered the second lecture of the morning. Ioannis Maimaris, Innovation Manager at Smart Agro Hub, presented Digital Twins in Agriculture: From Data to Decision Intelligence — The Digital Mirror of the Farm: From Understanding to Decision Intelligence in Agriculture. The lecture explored how digital twin technology can create real-time virtual replicas of farm systems — integrating sensor data, weather models, soil parameters, and crop growth models — to support farmers and agronomists in making faster, more accurate, and more confident decisions.

After a coffee break, the afternoon shifted to field-level applications of digital technology in Serbian agriculture.

Lazar Turšijan (UNSFA) presented on the Application of Drones in Wheat Production, covering practical UAV deployment for crop monitoring, yield estimation, and the detection of disease and stress indicators in wheat fields — one of Serbia's most important commodity crops.

Vladimir Ćirić (UNSFA) then presented on Soil Mapping and Precision Fertilization, demonstrating how geospatial soil data can be collected, processed, and translated into variable-rate fertilisation maps — reducing input costs while maintaining or improving crop yields.

The day concluded with a structured discussion and key conclusions session, consolidating the main technical insights across all four presentations.

Day 2 — Friday, 29 May 2026

The second day focused on two of the most important digital tools currently being developed and tested within the TALLHEDA ecosystem: the QuantiFarm Toolkit and the AGRIS platform.

Nikola Kopilović (TERRA, Serbia) opened the day with Bridging Tools and Outcomes: Learning Digital Agriculture with the QuantiFarm Toolkit — showing how the QuantiFarm Toolkit can be used not only for operational farm management, but as a structured learning resource for students, farmers, and practitioners engaging with digital technologies for the first time.

Pavel Benka and Nikola Santrač (UNSFA) then led an extended demonstration of the AGRIS platform — UNSFA's integrated digital tool for agricultural research data management. Participants were introduced to the platform's architecture, its data entry and management features, and its potential for supporting both experimental research and citizen science data collection within the broader TALLHEDA framework.

The day closed with a key conclusions session, allowing all participants to reflect on the two days' content and identify areas of follow-up and collaboration across partners' ongoing work.

Building the Alliance in Practice

The Novi Sad Brainstorming Action exemplified what TALLHEDA's alliance-building approach looks like in practice: researchers and innovators from three countries, working across disciplines — from soil science and drone technology to digital twins and precision farming platforms — sharing expertise openly and building the kind of mutual understanding that underpins lasting institutional partnerships.

The participation of Smart Agro Hub as a presenting institution underscores the organisation's growing role within the consortium not only as Communication, Dissemination and Exploitation Manager, but as an active knowledge contributor bringing real-world digital agriculture expertise to partner universities.

The four rounds of Brainstorming Actions completed to date have collectively covered soil science, precision farming, digital tools, drones, IoT, irrigation digital twins, and farmer-centred learning methodologies — building a cumulative body of shared knowledge that will directly inform the project's training frameworks, citizen science protocol, and final conference outputs.