AgriProAct, a Cypriot research project, is building a weather-forecasting decision-support system with a dual purpose: to help farmers decide what to do this week and to give Cyprus's Department of Meteorology sharper, field-level forecasts and a way to assess their performance.
Most agricultural technology is built only for the field. AgriProAct is built for the field and for the service that forecasts the weather for the whole island. For the grower, it aims to translate weather, satellite and soil data into clear guidance for a single parcel of land.
For Cyprus's Department of Meteorology, which asked for exactly this kind of capability, the same system promises forecasts at the level of the individual field and, just as important, a way to measure how well those forecasts actually perform, something it has not had until now. Bringing those two needs together in one system is the idea at the centre of the project.
The pressure that makes it necessary
Cyprus feels the strain of a changing climate more sharply than most. Drought, sudden downpours, late frosts and creeping salinity all cut into what farms produce, and the bill tends to arrive twice: first for the grower, then for the public purse, through compensation and support. Water, already scarce, is often spent where forecasts are too blunt to help growers use it sparingly. The premise of AgriProAct is that much of the information needed to ease this pressure is already being collected. What has been missing is a way to convert it into timely decisions.
Turning scattered signals into decisions
The system brings together sources the country largely has in place: the national Department of Meteorology's weather stations and forecasts, satellite imagery, sensors placed in the soil and, on livestock farms, GPS collars. Working in close cooperation with the Department of Meteorology, whose data is central to the design, AgriProAct estimates the conditions each field is likely to meet in the days ahead, then measures its own forecasts against what actually happens and corrects course, so the guidance grows more reliable over time.
The gap it targets is precision. National forecasts describe areas roughly two kilometres across, too broad to capture the frost pocket in a corner of a vineyard or the microclimate of a single vegetable plot. AgriProAct aims to reach the individual field and to hand the farmer something usable rather than raw numbers: short prompts via app, text message, or website on irrigation, fertiliser timing, and preparing for frost, drought, or heavy rain, each carrying an honest sense of how confident the system is. The tool is meant to inform the decision, never to make it for the farmer.
Built on what the island already has
Because it reuses infrastructure Cyprus already owns rather than building a parallel system from scratch, AgriProAct keeps costs contained and offers a credible path to national rollout. It is also Cypriot technology with room to travel: the same approach could later serve other Mediterranean regions facing similar climate pressures, turning a national research effort into a service that can be offered beyond the island.
The consortium, and the road ahead
The project is coordinated by TERRATEQ Innovation, in partnership with the University of Cyprus and the CYENS Centre of Excellence.
"The opportunity is to take data the country already owns and turn it into guidance a farmer can act on the next morning, and forecasts the national weather service can stand behind," says Dr Marios Sophocleous, coordinator at TERRATEQ Innovation.
The proof will come in the field. In a later phase, AgriProAct is planned to be tested on working farms across vegetable, vineyard, and mixed cereal-and-livestock systems, with the sites and participating farmers still to be confirmed. Those trials will show, on real fields and with real data, how much of the promise holds.
This project is funded by the Republic of Cyprus through the Research and Innovation Foundation (RIF), within the framework of the RESTART 2016–2020 Programmes for Research, Technological Development and Innovation, under the “AI in Government” Programme, Call AI IN GOV’T/0725/0012.
