On 15^th December 2020, VISCA Final Conference was held virtually to present the results of the project and the way forward. The conference attracted around 60 participants with a variety of profiles: viticulturists, wine producers, scientists, agricultural communities, software providers, entrepreneurs, media, among others who connected to the e-conference from 10 countries: Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Israel, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and the UK.

The e-conference started with a welcoming statement from the project coordinator (METEOSIM) by Josep Sole Maria and the CEO of METEOSIM Oriol de Tera who opened the floor to the two guest speakers from the European Commission: Sasa Zavadlav (VISCA project Officer) and Marjan Van Meerloo, Directorate General for Research & Innovation. They both presented 'R&I contribution to the Green Deal objectives: Climate Action'.

After that, a session on VISCA presentation and results was organized. A short presentation of VISCA was made by the project Coordinator Josep Maria Solé. Then, Claudio Rossi from LINKS  Foundation made a short live demo of the VISCA Decision Support System (DSS) & its added value. The DSS is a Progressive Web Application which integrates climate and agricultural models with farmers’ management specifications to design short practices, medium- and long-term adaptation strategies to climate change. The live demo showed the integrated dashboard of the DSS with its 3 main widgets (phenology, sugar accumulation, irrigation and weather forecasts) as well as the features in relation to the map-based visualization. Later, the key results of the validation of the DSS and the climate services as well as the outcomes from the agronomic techniques: crop forcing and shoot trimming were illustrated by Omar Garcia from IRTA. VISCA solutions were demonstrated in 3 sites in Italy, Portugal and Spain . An interactive round table with end-users representing Codorniu (Xavier Bordes), Symington (Fernando Alves) and Mastroberardino (Antonio Dente) was part of this session where they shared their feedback from the implementation of VISCA solutions.

The weather conditions have an important role in the development of many social and economic activities. Forecasting of weather conditions can be useful to plan activities especially during extreme events as such information can help to react in time and, consequently, support businesses which are weather-sensitive. This is the case of the wine sector; whose production and crop quality highly depend on the weather conditions.

In this context, weather forecasting becomes of a paramount importance and provides added-value to the end-users to manage their resources and in-field activities and to anticipate potential extreme events.

A radio interview has been recently made by Schweizer Radio und Fernsehen (SRF; English: Swiss Radio and Television) with VISCA consortium during the 3rd General Meeting and Stakeholder's Workshop. The interview discussed about climate change implications in vineyards and how our project is responding to these challenges and helping farmers adapt to climate change through providing climate services accessible via VISCA DSS.

You may listen to the interview by clicking on this link. VISCA interview starts in minute 40:40 (in German).

**SRF is a Swiss broadcasting company and one of the largest electronic media house of German-speaking Switzerland and has its main studios in Basel, Bern and Zürich.

Agriculture, including food-related industries and services, is one of the main economic sectors in the EU which provides over 44 million jobs (EC, 2019). The diverse climate, fertile soil, quality standards and technical expertise of the European farmers have made the EU a leading actor in this sector globally.

However, agriculture is currently facing deep economic, technological and regulatory changes where the impacts of climate change and resulting natural disasters exacerbate the challenges. That’s why the EU has been investing in diverse projects and initiatives to foster innovation and improve the efficiency of this sector.

With the support of the Common Dissemination Booster team, a new publication titled: 'Providing Innovative Solutions to Improve the Efficiency of the Agriculture Sector' presents a cluster of 4 innovative EU-funded projects VISCA, WEAM4i, OpIRIS & IRRIMAN. It briefly presents the issues and challenges as well as the results and solutions brought by these projects. You may click here to download the 2-pager.

We are excited to publish our first issue of VISCA Newsletter where you will find a recap on the developments of our project since its beginning in May 2017!  Check it out here and subscribe to receive the next issue of our newsletter.