Ochratoxin A Growth Probability Estimation in Wine Production Using AI-Powered IoT Devices

Mycotoxins are toxic compounds naturally produced by different ubiquitous filamentous fungi. Present in many foods, also colonize grapes during their growth in the vineyard. The production of mycotoxins by these fungi is heavily influenced by the substrate, and also by environmental factors such as high levels of temperature and humidity, conditions worsened nowadays by the ongoing climate change on a global scale. Ochratoxin A (OTA) is one of the most abundant food-contaminating mycotoxins produced by species belonging to Aspergillus and Penicillium genera and the main mycotoxin present in grapes on whose pericarp usually fungi are present. During the harvest, the permanence of the grapes in the field could induce the production of OTA which, consequently, may contaminate future grape products such as wine, grape juice and dried vine fruit. In this paper, we propose an electronic solution based on Internet of Things (IoT) devices and powered by artificial intelligence. The system exploits environmental sensor measurements to feed a neural network model that was designed and implemented on a microcontroller with the aim of classifying the probability of OTA growth during grape harvesting phases, according to the occurrence of specific harvesting conditions.