Successful first period for Cybergrass

The project was officially launched through a hybrid kick-off meeting in Umeå, Sweden, in April 2025, which was a successful opportunity to facilitate the engagement, discussions and cooperation. There were also regular online meetings, which were essential to discuss more details on the partnership agreement, work package activities, deliverables and communication strategies.

Lead partner Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences (SLU), Sweden coordinated and facilitated the collaboration between partners and established the administrative and communication structures. SLU also supported technical progress across the work packages (WP), coordinating and performing some of the activities planned for period 1, such as field work protocol for WP1, activities and data collection with drones, as well as discussing and aligning the methodologies and remote sensing approaches carried out in the WPs among partners.

Project partner Rural Economy and Agricultural Society Norrbotten-Västerbotten (HS), Sweden played an extremely relevant role for HS was to engage with local dairy farms, and organise and execute field data collection, as well as promote the project to target groups during public events, as well as through posters and website updates.

Natural Resources Institute Finland (Luke), dedicated efforts on the imagery and reference data acquisition plan and collection for WP1 and WP2. A very interesting activity was a demonstration of a new technology for drone operations called BVLOS (Beyond Visual Line of Sight) at a farm scale. They also developed and shared a drone data collection protocol and contributed to stakeholder communication through posters, website updates, and farmer meetings.

 Finnish Geospatial Research Institute (FGI), also successfully performed the planned activities, including the collection of field reference, drone imagery and data from advanced technologies in remote sensing in Finland, especially for WP3.

Icelandic Agricultural Advisory Center (RML), played a very important role in Iceland, coordinating and planning the field activities, collecting data and communicating with farmers. RML has also successfully worked on dissemination by presenting the project at national farmers' events and professional meetings.

Partner Svarmi, dedicated efforts to the collection of very detailed drone data from the farms in Iceland, using multiple drones. A very interesting input from Svarmi was the use of their online platform to deliver processed drone aerial images, which can support further project activities.

”Overall, this reporting period was successful in establishing the project foundation and implementation. All partners contributed to achieving the planned deliverables and building a collaborative framework for the next stages of the project”, says Dr Julianne Oliveira, Project manager.