For vineyard growers, timing is everything.
A treatment applied too early may have little effect. A treatment applied too late may allow an entire generation of pests to establish itself before any action is taken. This is why professional pest management has long relied on a concept known as thermal accumulation, also referred to as growing degree days (GDD) or thermal integral.
Within Project CERBERUS, this well-established scientific methodology is combined with smart monitoring technologies to make professional decision-support tools more accessible to farmers, helping them anticipate pest development instead of simply reacting to it.
More than counting insects
Smart traps are often associated with automatic insect counting and remote monitoring. While these capabilities already represent a major advance over conventional traps, they are only part of the picture.
The smart traps deployed in CERBERUS also function as environmental monitoring stations. In addition to recording insect captures, they continuously measure local conditions, including temperature directly inside the vineyard.
This is particularly important because insects do not develop according to the calendar—they develop according to temperature.
Understanding thermal accumulation
Unlike mammals, insects cannot regulate their own body temperature. Their biological development depends entirely on the amount of heat accumulated from the surrounding environment.
Rather than counting days, entomologists count heat.
Each day contributes a small amount of thermal energy. By adding these values over time, specialists can estimate how quickly an insect population is progressing through its life cycle.
This cumulative calculation—known as thermal accumulation—has been used by crop protection professionals for many years to predict when new pest generations are likely to emerge.
Bringing professional forecasting closer to farmers
CERBERUS takes this proven methodology one step further.
Instead of relying solely on data from distant weather stations, the project uses the environmental sensors integrated into its smart traps to record the actual microclimatic conditions experienced by the crop.
These data are automatically transmitted to the CERBERUS platform, where they are combined with trap observations and other monitoring information. By integrating temperature records with biological monitoring, the platform can estimate when the next generation of Lobesia botrana is expected to appear.
For growers, this means replacing uncertainty with evidence-based forecasts based on the real conditions of each monitored vineyard.
From monitoring to prediction
One of the defining characteristics of CERBERUS is that it goes beyond observing what is happening today.
By combining smart traps, environmental sensors, digital monitoring and predictive models, the project helps anticipate what is likely to happen tomorrow.
Because protecting crops is not only about detecting pests—it is about staying one step ahead of them.
Learn More
Want to discover how CERBERUS transforms monitoring data into practical decision-support tools?
Explore the CERBERUS App Tutorials, where you can learn how the platform integrates trap monitoring, analytics, spraying workflows and other key functionalities.