Conference schedule

 

The conference will be held at the

Polina Mendeléef Room, Building AB, U-Square
Boulevard General Jacques 210, 1050 Brussels.

 

4 February 2026

12:30  13:00: Registrations and welcome coffee 

13:00 – 13:30: Openings

13:30 – 14:30: Plenary session 1 – “AI and robots for precision agriculture @Sapienza”, Prof. Daniele Nardi, Sapienza Università di Roma
Moderator: Emanuele Garone

14:30 – 14:50: Coffee break

Parallel session 1

 

Room 1: Plant and omics

Moderators: Silvia Turco and Luca Rossini

Room 2: Sensing and data processing

Moderators: Alessandro Vitale and Francesco Lamonaca

14:50 – 15:10

Genomics and proteomics of metal resistant bacterial endophytes interacting in planta.

Maxime Marcq

Real time plant motion dynamics sensing for stress detection and decision support in greenhouse management.

Thomas Reher

15:10 – 15:30

Root gene regulatory network analysis reveals SA and light signals as drivers of beneficial microbe recruitment.

Run Qi

POSEIDON: dataset for localization in a greenhouse.

Yuri Durodié

15:30 – 15:50

IMPEACHMENT Project: One year of progress in understanding and managing peach TCSB.

Federico Brugneti

Digital cow monitoring services: Imaginaries of control in sticky infrastructures.

Barbara Van Dyck

15:50 – 16:10

Within-field crop growth heterogeneity from a multi-year crop rotation perspective.

Tom Kenda

A GeoAI-based digital twin prototype for climate-agriculture vulnerability forecasting in Mediterranean cropping systems.

Alessandro Vitale

16:10 – 16:30: Coffee break

Parallel session 2

 

Room 1: Modelling

Moderators: Cerian Webb and Tim Belien

Room 2: Agronomy and smart farming

Moderators: Milos Petrovic and Andrea Garcia Hernandez

16:30 – 16:50

Atmospheric dispersion modelling as a tool for investigating the arrival of Ips typographus in the UK.

Cerian Webb

Optimal PV panels tilt orientation for balancing crop shading and power generation in agrivoltaics.

Nicola Mignoni

16:50 – 17:10

Assessment of 7 weather forecast models for use in Belgian agriculture.

Valerian Authelet

Enhanced U-temporal attention encoder for multi-step NDVI forecasting and vegetation stress detection from Sentinel-2 time series.

Martina Formichini

17:10 – 17:30

EVA OPTIMISE: Climate-driven phenology modeling for optimized pest control in fruit production.

Tim Belien

Balancing profit and sustainability: Multi-objective co-design of lighting and renewable energy systems in vertical farms using an integrated model.

Shuyi Peng

17:30 – 17:50

Where can I collect my data? Physiologically-based models and state-observers support entomological monitoring.

Ouassim Benhamouche

Use of a fungicide resistance risk score for analysing common mistakes in the fungicide use made by farmers.

Margherita Furiosi

5 February 2026

8:30 – 09:00: Registration and welcome coffee

9:00 – 10:00: Keynote speaker – Digibiocontrol & Biocontrol 4.0: Two projects pioneering sustainable agriculture for healthier future, Prof. Philippe Jacques, Gembloux AgroBioTech – Université de Liège
Moderator: David Cannella

Session 1

 

Room 1: General session

Moderators: Christian Hermans and Silvana Porco

10:00 – 10:20

Years of metagenomics analysis in plant microbiome research: Insights from comparative case studies.

Silvia Turco

10:20 – 10:40

Estimating paddy water requirements using regional weather data and cultivar-specific rice growth predictions.

Shinji Fukuda

10:40 – 11:10: Coffee break

Session 2

 

Room 1: General session

Moderators: Christian Hermans and Silvana Porco

11:10 – 11:30

Automatic asset control of an agricultural robot operating in sloped vineyards.

Paolo Gay

11:30 – 11:50

Agrivoltaic greenhouses: a West-Sicily case study.

Riccardo Caponetto

11:50 – 12:10

What we catch is not what we see. When monitoring traps provide distorted information.

Jean-Claude Grégoire

12:10 – 12:30

Development of the yellow mealworm (Tenebrio molitor L.) on different diets.

Milos Petrovic

12:30 – 14:00: Lunch break and poster

14:00 – 14:50: Keynote speaker – Plant-inspired biohybrid technologies for precision and sustainable agriculture, Dr. Isabella Fiorello, Freiburg Center for Interactive Materials and Bioinspired Technologies
Moderator: David Cannella

Session 3

 

Room 1: EU corner

Moderators: David Cannella and Emanuele Garone

14:50 – 15:10

From olive waste to green resources: The OLinWASTE circular biorefinery

Vincenzo Lionetti

15:10 – 15:30

CROPSAFE: Advancing sustainable crop production through bio-based and circular solutions

Federico Lopez-Moya

15:30 – 15:50

ZELDA – Zero-waste lignocellulose-derived biorefinery products for smart plant protection.

Julien Van Den Eynde

 

 

15:50 – 16:20: Coffee break

16:20 – 17:30: Panel discussion
Moderators: Susanna Albertini and Selenia Marinelli, FVA New Media Research

Panelists:

  • Laura Elisabeth Gaarde Andersen, European Biosolution Coalition, Denmark
  • Domenico Deserio, DG Santé, EU
  • Ana Ruiz Sierra, CBE-JU, EU
  • Pasquale Di Rubbo, DG Agri, EU
  • Nicoletta Antelli, Confagricoltura

19:00: Dinner @ University Foundation – 11, Rue d’Egmont 11 – 1000 Bruxelles

6 February 2026

8:30 – 09:00: Registration and welcome coffee

Parallel session 1

 

Room 1: Plant

Moderators: Federico Lopez-Moya and Luca Rossini

Room 2: Sensing

Moderators: Tom Kenda and Alessandro Vitale

9:00 – 9:20

Assessing innovative microbial and biomolecule-based crop protection under field conditions against fungal diseases and insect pests in wheat.

Arnaud Segers

A geospatial metrology framework for benchmarking global climate datasets across a European latitudinal gradient.

Alessandro Vitale

9:20 – 9:40

“Males also count – and we can count them too”: automatic detection of Toumeyella parvicornis adult males from trap-captured images.

Nicoló Di Sora

Multi-objective optimization and control of microalgal production in bioreactors under self-inhibition.

Antonio Spallone

9:40 – 10:00

Mind the legacy gap. Fostering context-awareness in scientific reporting of field trials. A scoping review.

Morgane De Toeuf

Near real-time GAI retrieval using Sentinel-1 and Sentinel-2 data.

Quentin Deffense

10:00 – 10:20

Spatiotemporal partitioning between Dryophytes leopardus and Pelophylax nigromaculatus revealed by signal processing methods.

Hinata Matsubara

Phenotyping from space: Evaluating very high-resolution satellite based trait estimation in winter wheat microplot trials.

Tom Kenda

10:20 – 10:50: Coffee break

Parallel session 2

 

Room 1: Robotics and sensing

Moderators: Paolo Gay and Emanuele Garone

Room 2: Modelling

Moderators: Silvia Turco and Milos Petrovic

10:50 – 11:10

What we learned from the field test of the pruning robot.

Gaoyuan Liu

Modelling the olive fruit fly population dynamics through delay differential equations and host-phenology-driven fertility.

Mattia Animobono

11:10 – 11:30

Multi-target motion planning for autonomous agricultural robots.

Mahmoud Ghorab

Digital twin of an apple orchard with Bayesian-based yield prediction using flower clusters and treatment data.

Naftali Slob

11:30 – 11:50

The potential of spray drones for plant protection and pesticide authorization opportunities in Hungary and the European Union.

András Borhi

A compartmental, dynamic model accounting for complex interactions among grapevine, trunk diseases, and environmental conditions.

Chiara Raineri

   

12:00 – 12:10: Closing remarks

12:10 – 13:15: Lunch

13:15: Departure bus for visit to Proefstation (optional)

List of Poster Presentations:

  1. Climate-driven phenology modeling to support survey and intervention schedules for priority quarantine pests under Belgian climatic conditions.
    Tim Belien
  2. Arabidopsis root clock: Linking circadian timing to mineral nutrition.
    Andrea García Hernández
  3. A network meta-analysis on decision tools’ use in viticulture: further evidence of the potential benefits.
    Margherita Furiosi
  4. Swarm coordination using large language models in agricultural applications.
    Alessandro Nazzari
  5. Cellulose derived oligosaccharides activate ROS independent immunity pathway while protecting tomato from B. cinerea.
    Lea Marischal
  6. Drone-powered multispectral phenotyping accelerates stress- and disease-tolerant sugar beet selection.
    Mattia Sartor
  7. Estimation of sorghum morphological parameters from partial 3D point clouds using a simulation-based growth model.
    Naohisa Nakashima
  8. Assessment of shewanella spp. contamination in seafood processing: Insights from environmental and equipment surfaces.
    Yolande Proroga
  9. Application of ddPCR for detecting Toxoplasma gondii and Giardia duodenalis in emerging plant-based foods.
    Andrea Mancusi
  10. Hyperspectral imaging for useful substance production using rice plants cultivated in closed plant factories with artificial lighting.
    Uto Kuniaki
  11. Integrated ecotoxiological and genetic risk assessment of pollen: Towards defining apiculture maps for food safety.
    Giuseppe Rofrano
  12. A spatio-temporal sampling point selection model for high-density monitoring of biotic stresses in cropping systems.
    Dana Levanon
  13. ZELDA – Zero-waste lignocellulose-derived biorefinery products for smart plant protection.
    Julien Van Den Eynde
  14. Cyanobacterial exopolysaccharides as biostimulants in tomato cultivated in hydroponics.
    Silvana Porco
  15. Towards high-repetition remote sensing: tower-based validation and drone mapping of sub-daily soil-plant dynamics.
    Merlin Mareschal
  16. Harnessing root system architecture for climate-smart crops.
    Pramod Ramchandra Sargar
  17. Generation of XOS-rich fractions with potential plant elicitor activity from agricultural and forest residues.
    Maria del Prado García Aparicio
  18. Automated crop field inspection for efficient protection treatment planning and delivery.
    Paolo Falcone
  19. Predicting crack risk in pomegranade fruits using RGB and thermal sensing.
    Sahar Shpitaler