Supporting growers to keep Europe’s wine flowing!

People often forget just how significant the wine industry is in Europe. Across the EU there are about 2.2 million wine‑growing farms looking after roughly 3.2 million hectares of vines, and every year those vineyards turn out something like 150 million hectolitres of wine, that’s around 20 billion bottles a year.But growers are getting squeezed in two directions: more unstable harvests, and weaker demand. When a bottle is poured, it isn’t just a drink on the table. It’s part of a sector that keeps villages alive and brings billions into the economy.So, what can we do to help the situation? Our three guests, all of whom have received support from the EU’s research and innovation funding programme, have some intriguing ideas.Filipe Neves dos Santos develops autonomous robots and machinery, which can operatesafely on steep slopes, for the agricultural and forestry sectors. He works at the Centre forRobotics in Industry and Intelligent Systems, INESC TEC,in Portugal.Zoe Doulgeri is professor of Robotics and Control of Manufacturing Systems at the Aristotle University of Thessaloniki. Her current research interests include learning and control of unimanual and bimanual robotic object manipulation.Gustavo Pérez González is a senior project manager at the Autonomous University of Barcelona. He specialises in analytical chemistry, specifically to develop secure, traceable and immutable solutions for wine authentication.