Final Conference of the VIRAL Project

The final conference at which a retrospective was made and the final report of the VIRAL - Vitalising ICT Relevance in Agricultural Learning project was adopted on 19 July 2023 was opened by Vice-Rector for International and Interuniversity Cooperation of the University of Banja Luka Prof. Milica Balaban, PhD. 

Project coordinator Prof. Miljan Cvetković, PhD, thanked the members of the project consortium and presented the achieved results in the introductory presentation, while also Vice-Dean for Scientific Research and International Cooperation of the Faculty of Agriculture Prof. Branimir Nježić, PhD, addressed all the present at the event at the University of Banja Luka Rectorate.

As could be heard during this event, in the past 45 months much work has been done through the 'VIRAL' project to strengthen capacities and promote the use of information and communication technologies on which precision agriculture is based, such as weather stations, insect pest monitoring using automatic traps, irrigation sensors, agricultural drones, cameras for monitoring fruit growth and others. The project resulted in the organization of student competitions for students of agricultural faculties, virtual fairs, a course for students in the field of ICT use in agriculture, and a series of educational workshops and materials related to this field.  

During the working part of the conference at the Faculty of Agriculture, innovative solutions and new approaches to work were presented in more detail, focusing on young people as the bearers of the development of information and communication technologies in agriculture. 

VIRAL is the first Erasmus+ coordination project of the University of Banja Luka, the value of which is 880,000 euros. The project consortium consists of 17 universities, companies and non-governmental organizations from Bosnia and Herzegovina, Serbia, Montenegro, Slovenia, Romania and the Netherlands.