From the field “by eye” to the “connected” field For centuries, cereals — wheat, maize, barley — were cultivated thanks to farmers’ experience: watching the sky, reading the signs of the soil, adjusting water and fertilizer “by eye.” Today, however, fields have become connected and monitored places.Precision agriculture is not science fiction: it means using …
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Wheat: more than just bread Wheat is one of the most widely grown and consumed cereals in the world. But the ways we eat it vary greatly by culture: bread in Europe and North Africa, pasta in Italy, noodles and mantou in East Asia, chapati and flatbreads in India and the Middle East. The global …
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Why talk about blockchain in wheat Wheat passes through many hands: from the farmer to storage, from transporters to mills, and finally to bakeries or pasta makers. At each stage, there are documents, quality checks, and payments. Often, these data remain fragmented or not fully transparent. Blockchain is a technology that records all this information …
Why wheat genetics matters Wheat is one of the pillars of global food security: it provides about 18–20% of calories and proteins in the human diet worldwide, with much higher shares in North Africa and Western Asia. Understanding how varieties evolve and which tools breeders use is crucial for yields, quality, and the resilience of …
From September 3 to 5, 2025, the EcoWheatItaly project was presented at the 22nd European Conference on Multi-Agent Systems (EUMAS 2025), hosted by the University POLITEHNICA of Bucharest (Romania), one of the most relevant European venues for research on distributed AI and agent-based simulation. Prof. Gianfranco Giulioni (University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara), together with Edmondo …
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The EcoWheatItaly project took part in the Social Simulation Conference 2025 (SSC 2025), hosted by the Delft University of Technology (The Netherlands) from August 25 to 29, 2025 — one of the leading international events in the field of social simulation and agent-based modeling. Gianfranco Giulioni (University “G. d’Annunzio” of Chieti-Pescara) presented the work, in …
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The EcoWheatItaly project was presented at the SIMULTECH 2025 – International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications, hosted by the University of Deusto (Bilbao, Spain) from June 11 to 13, 2025. Representing the research team, Gianfranco Giulioni delivered the talk in the “Application Domains” session, entitled: “Modeling and Simulating the Italian Wheat …
The seed is the starting point of every harvest, and controlling its availability means wielding enormous power over global agricultural production. Over the past thirty years, the seed sector has undergone an unprecedented wave of consolidation, drastically reducing the number of independent players. From Farmers’ Seeds to Patented Seeds For centuries, farmers selected, saved, and …
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Wheat is not only the raw material for bread, pasta, or pizza: it is also an indicator of how our food system functions. In recent decades, the wheat supply chain has become highly globalized: grains grown in Canada or Ukraine reach Italian mills, flours produced in Europe end up in baked goods in Asia, and …
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However, the growing threat of desertification is compromising the production stability of this strategic crop, with direct implications for food availability and global markets. Desertification, defined by the United Nations Convention to Combat Desertification (UNCCD) as land degradation in arid, semi-arid, and dry sub-humid areas due to climate factors and human activities, currently covers over …
Read more “Desertification and grain production: a fragile balance”