Università degli studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia

In this paper, we illustrate the technological innovations we implemented in a test-bed field to automate the bug scouting process. Our work is motivated by the invasive global pest Halyomorpha halys (HH), whose damages have a huge economic impact for fruit orchards. We propose the automation of the time- and labor-intensive process of the HH scouting, traditionally performed by phytosanitary operators. We then describe the selection criteria that led to the hardware architecture designed consisting of a UAV, an RGB vision chip, a new ad hoc trap, and micro-climate stations. We also look for recognition algorithms based on deep learning models that can learn to recognize the HH after a training based on a dataset of images. Our very preliminary results show that the performances of UAV deep learning algorithms trained on artificial datasets are not satisfactory when tested on real images. However, very satisfactory results were obtained from the stationary ad hoc trap monitoring system running on the edge.

Distributed Ledgers are becoming commonly used technologies to trace agri-food supply chains in view of their safety, immutability, transparency and scalability. In the present review, we discuss the most relevant case studies of agri-food supply chain traceability using blockchain and other Distributed Ledgers technologies. Considering that each supply chain actually has specific requests of traceability, we here suggest a logical scheme in order to favour the identification of the blockchain structure that is more appropriate for each agri-food supply chain, including the identification of supply chains where complex blockchain technologies are actually not necessary.

The availability of genomic data in the last decade relating to different aphid species has allowed the analysis of the genomic variability occurring among such species, whereas intra-specific variability has hitherto very largely been neglected. In order to analyse the intra-genomic variability in the peach potato aphid, Myzus persicae, comparative analyses were performed revealing several clone-specific gene duplications, together with numerous deletions/rearrangements. Our comparative approach also allowed us to evaluate the synteny existing between the two M. persicae clones tested and between the peach potato aphid and the pea aphid, Acyrthosiphon pisum. Even if part of the observed rearrangements are related to a low quality of some assembled contigs and/or to the high number of contigs present in these aphid genomes, our evidence reveals that aphid clones are genetically more different than expected. These results suggest that the choice of performing genomes sequencing combining different biotypes/populations, as revealed in the case of the soybean aphid, Aphis glycines, is unlikely to be very informative in aphids. Interestingly, it is possible that the holocentric nature of aphid chromosomes favours genome rearrangements that can be successively inherited transgenerationally via the aphid’s apomictic (parthenogenetic) mode of reproduction. Lastly, we evaluated the structure of the cluster of genes coding for the five histones (H1, H2A, H2B, H3 and H4) in order to better understand the quality of the two M. persicae genomes and thereby to improve our knowledge of this functionally important gene family