Digital twins in strawberry cultivation: A systematic literature review

On 26 May 2026, the TALLHEDA project was represented at the XV International Symposium on Agricultural Sciences — AgroReS 2026, through the submission of a scientific poster by TERRA, the project's Serbian partner. The poster, entitled "Digital Twins in Strawberry Cultivation: A Systematic Literature Review", was presented at one of the most internationally recognised agricultural science conferences in the Western Balkans region.

AgroReS 2026 was held from 25 to 28 May 2026 in the city of Trebinje, Republic of Srpska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, organised by the Faculty of Agriculture at the University of Banja Luka in cooperation with 19 institutions and organisations from ten countries, with the aim of bringing together researchers and experts from the fields of agriculture and related sciences to promote new scientific knowledge as an essential prerequisite for improving food production.

TERRA's poster contributed a systematic literature review exploring the current state and future potential of digital twin technology in strawberry production — one of the most economically significant and technically demanding horticultural crops in Southern and Eastern Europe. The review highlights the transformative potential of digital twins to enhance strawberry cultivation through real-time monitoring of crop health and environmental conditions, optimised irrigation scheduling based on continuous sensor data, and data-driven decision-making across the full production cycle. By creating a virtual replica of the physical growing environment — integrating soil sensors, weather data, growth models, and remote sensing inputs — digital twin systems offer strawberry growers a powerful tool for precision agriculture that can reduce input costs, improve yield quality, and support more sustainable resource use.

The poster also honestly identifies the key technical, methodological, and economic challenges that must be overcome for the successful large-scale deployment of digital twin systems in strawberry production. These include the high cost of sensor infrastructure and data connectivity in rural growing areas, the absence of standardised data models and interoperability protocols across platforms, the need for validated crop-specific growth models, and the limited digital literacy among smallholder strawberry producers who would stand to benefit most from these technologies. These challenges echo themes central to the TALLHEDA project's broader mission — and connect directly to the citizen science, training, and capacity-building frameworks developed within the consortium.

AgroReS 2026 provided an opportunity for researchers and experts to present their work in the form of oral or poster presentations, while institutions, companies, and business entities could also showcase their services and products — creating a rich environment for knowledge exchange between academia, research institutes, and the agricultural sector across the Western Balkans, South-East Europe, and beyond.

TERRA's participation at AgroReS 2026 underlines the TALLHEDA project's commitment to contributing to the broader regional scientific community, ensuring that the research developed within the consortium reaches agricultural scientists and practitioners in the Western Balkans — a region of strategic importance for TALLHEDA given its partnership with the University of Novi Sad Faculty of Agriculture in Serbia.