THE FRENCH PAY HOMAGE TO ITALIAN VITICULTURE TECHNOLOGY

A small Italian company based in Pianello Val Tidone (Piacenza), La Spezia srl, is the only Italian company nominated for the 2025 SITEVI World Award, the world's highest honor for innovation in the winemaking industry. This award is awarded to InNoVaR , an intelligent system that transforms sprayers into sustainable precision instruments. The results of this highly coveted competition will be revealed, similar to the Oscars, on the evening of November 25th, coinciding with the gala dinner at the SITEVI trade show in Montpellier, the most important international trade fair dedicated to the winemaking industry.

The heart of the innovation is a kit, developed in collaboration with the Agricultural Engineering research group of the Department of Agricultural, Forestry and Food Sciences of the University of Turin (DiSAFA) , designed to be installed on existing sprayers, thus avoiding greater costs and the scrapping of still efficient machines.

The kit can be mounted on most conventional sprayers, transforming their spraying method from a constant flow to a variable flow. A combined sensor system mounted on the tractor analyzes the volume and density of vegetation at various heights in real time, allowing for automatic adjustment of the spraying mixture, differentiated by nozzle. Where there are no leaves, the mixture is not emitted; conversely, where there are leaves, the mixture is dosed in proportion to the amount of plant mass. We can therefore finally speak of VOLUMETRIC spraying , i.e., proportional to the canopy.

The advantages are not only economic and environmental, but also technical, as the nozzles operate at a fixed pressure, thus ensuring an ideal average droplet size for even wetting and biological efficacy. All these benefits combine with environmental sustainability, ensuring centimeter-level precision, with results that significantly increase the sustainability of treatments and their environmental impact.

• Savings of up to 73% on plant protection products detected
• water use drastically reduced
• Reduced treatment times due to fewer fillings
• leaf deposition efficiency doubled
• on average -50% of agrochemicals dispersed into the environment

" With the 2030 Agenda for Sustainability, the EU has called for a 50% reduction in plant protection products, but so far research has offered few truly applicable solutions. InNoVaR is a concrete step in this direction ," explains Giancarlo Spezia , founder of Tecnovict. " The French research community doesn't yet have this technology, and we've already received expressions of interest and collaboration from French research centers for the coming years, even though our collaborative relationship with the Agricultural Mechanics Department of the University of Turin is essential ."

The importance of the project has also been recognized by the Organisation Internationale de la Vigne et du Vin (OIV) , which requested technical investigations, confirming the pioneering value of this made in Italy technology, which is ready to make its mark throughout Europe.