The Horizon Europe Research and Innovation Action SENTRY officially launched its four-year programme of work with a kick-off meeting held on 23-25 June 2026 in Limassol, Cyprus, hosted by coordinating partner STREMBLE VENTURES LTD. UBITECH is proud to be a partner in this ambitious initiative, which brings together a consortium of research organisations, technology providers and agri-food stakeholders to safeguard crops and supply chains against the growing threat of plant pathogens. Running under Grant Agreement No. 101288591 for 48 months from June 2026, SENTRY delivers a systems-based phytosanitary solution that couples novel interventions with digital infrastructures across the entire agri-food chain.
The project will develop and validate a portfolio of measures, including biocontrols, nanobubbles, UV-C sanitation, antimicrobial packaging and cold plasma, embedded within ISPM-14-aligned protocols. These interventions are complemented by autonomous airborne molecular diagnostics, environmental sensing, metagenomics, digital-twin modelling and AI-powered decision support, together enabling early detection, risk forecasting and targeted intervention. The result is a measurable reduction in chemical use and crop losses, alongside improved resilience and consumer safety across the value chain.
Within SENTRY, UBITECH is responsible for ensuring that every AI output generated across the project, from machine learning and deep learning models to the project’s LLM-powered assistant, remains interpretable and aligned with responsible AI principles. This is achieved through a combination of post-hoc explainability techniques, such as SHAP, LIME and PGExplainer, and inherently interpretable models, including decision trees and rule-based systems, ensuring that end users can trust and act upon the system’s recommendations with confidence.
UBITECH will also integrate heterogeneous data sources spanning weather, crop models, pathogen surveillance, traceability, Earth Observation and in-field sensors, applying advanced cleaning, normalisation and transformation methods to ensure data readiness across the platform. The company will maintain metadata registries and enforce rigorous data quality and validation standards, underpinned by a GDPR-compliant big data architecture designed to support both real-time integration and batch processing.
At the core of UBITECH’s contribution is the leadership of the whole value-chain phytosanitary risk digital twin modelling. UBITECH will develop the digital twin backbone of SENTRY, embedding advanced AI risk prediction models into dynamic simulations of phytosanitary risks across the value chain, from field to fork, enabling stakeholders to anticipate threats and act before losses occur.
UBITECH’s technical contributions to SENTRY are carried out by its Big Data Engineering, Analytics & Science (DEA) Research Group, which specialises in large-scale data architectures, explainable AI and decision-support systems for complex, real-world domains. More information on the group’s work is available at ubitech.eu/dea.
Dr Kostas Perakis, Head, Big Data Engineering, Analytics & Science (DEA) Research Group, commented: “SENTRY gives us the opportunity to put trustworthy AI to work where it matters most: protecting food systems at scale. Our task is to make sure that every prediction, every alert and every recommendation generated by the project’s models is not only accurate, but transparent and explainable to the agronomists, inspectors and decision-makers who rely on them. The digital twin we are building will turn fragmented data on weather, pathogens, sensors and traceability into a coherent, real-time picture of phytosanitary risk across the entire value chain, allowing stakeholders to move from reacting to outbreaks to anticipating them.”
About SENTRY
SENTRY (“A Precision Agriculture Solution for Plant Pathogen Surveillance and Risk Assessment”) is a Research and Innovation Action funded under Horizon Europe, Grant Agreement No. 101288591, running for 48 months from June 2026. The project is coordinated by STREMBLE VENTURES LTD, which hosted the consortium’s kick-off meeting on 23-25 June 2026 in Limassol, Cyprus. SENTRY brings together partners from across the research, technology and agri-food sectors to build a systems-based phytosanitary solution combining novel biological and physical interventions with digital infrastructures for early detection, risk forecasting and targeted, sustainable crop protection.
Follow SENTRY’s progress on the project website at www.sentryproject.eu and on Facebook at facebook.com/sentryproject.
