Connect with us

Technology

Villa Sandi Turns Its Vineyards Into An Intelligent Ecosystem For Precision Viticulture

Published

10 hours ago

on

Agronomic data, climate sensors and artificial intelligence are being deployed across all of the Group’s estates in the Veneto and Friuli Venezia Giulia regions of Italy, driving a new approach to vineyard management that reduces resource consumption while enhancing grape quality.

CROCETTA DEL MONTELLO, Italy, July 20, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Villa Sandi, a historic family-owned winery in Italy’s Veneto region and a pioneer of premium Prosecco, is accelerating its commitment to precision viticulture by transforming its vineyards into an intelligent ecosystem where sensors, satellite imagery, drones and decision support systems work together to make every intervention more targeted and sustainable, while helping agronomists identify the ideal harvest window.

Among the wineries at the forefront of digital innovation in the Prosecco category, Villa Sandi has implemented a precision viticulture ecosystem connecting more than 200 hectares of vineyards through a single digital platform that collects and interprets agronomic and climate data in real time. The initiative, launched more than two years ago, is part of a broader sustainability strategy that has also earned all of Villa Sandi’s vineyards Biodiversity Friend certification, recognizing farming practices that protect ecosystems and natural resources.

The investment is designed to make vineyard management more precise, sustainable and resilient to climate change, while reinforcing the quality that underpins Villa Sandi’s continued growth in key export markets – foremost among them the United States, where demand for authentic, high-quality Prosecco continues to grow.

The system combines weather stations monitoring temperature, humidity, rainfall and wind; electronic leaf sensors measuring leaf wetness; and soil sensors reading moisture down to roughly 70 centimeters. AI-powered decision support tools transform this data into practical recommendations for agronomists, while drones and satellite imagery monitor vegetative vigor plot by plot, identifying variations within just a few meters, early signs of vine stress and the optimal harvest timing.

“Technology does not replace human expertise — it makes it more informed,” says Leonardo Moretti Polegato, Vice President of Villa Sandi. “Viticulture is built on observation, sensitivity and an in-depth knowledge of the land. Today, we can complement that experience with digital tools and artificial intelligence that help us interpret large volumes of data and better understand the specific needs of every vineyard. This allows us to intervene only where necessary, at the right time and with the appropriate level of intensity, improving grape quality while reducing our environmental impact.”

Agronomists now have real-time visibility into climate conditions, soil moisture, plant behavior and vineyard variability, enabling more accurate planning and targeted interventions. Their role has evolved from collecting information to interpreting it and applying field expertise. This approach responds directly to rising temperatures, increasingly erratic weather and growing pressure on water resources, which have led to more frequent heat stress, irregular rainfall and water scarcity. Continuous monitoring allows irrigation and plant protection treatments to be fine-tuned before problems arise, rather than reacting after the fact.

“Over the next 10 to 20 years, I believe AI will have its greatest impact in helping us understand vineyards more deeply and make increasingly precise decisions,” Moretti Polegato adds. “The ability to collect, analyze and interpret large amounts of data will allow us to anticipate plant needs, respond more effectively to climate challenges and optimize the use of natural resources. But the future of viticulture will not be driven by technology alone. The greatest value will come from combining artificial intelligence with human expertise. Technology can generate new insights, but it is the knowledge and sensitivity of viticulturists that transform data into meaningful decisions.”

The results are already tangible. Villa Sandi estimates it has reduced plant protection treatments by up to 20% and cut water consumption by an average of around 10% through optimized irrigation. Even greater gains have been achieved in vineyards where precision management is combined with soil composition studies and the “M” series rootstocks developed with the University of Milan’s Wine Research Team. In these plots, water savings reach up to 70% compared with neighboring vineyards, providing a practical response to increasingly frequent water stress.

This intelligent ecosystem marks a new phase in Villa Sandi’s innovation journey, driven by the daily collaboration of agronomists, winemakers and technical specialists, and designed to evolve as new technologies and expertise emerge. The goal is to deepen understanding of every vineyard, preserve its natural balance and consistently deliver grapes of the highest quality, harvest after harvest.

About Villa Sandi
Villa Sandi is a family-owned winery based in the Veneto region of Italy, housed in a historic 17th-century Palladian villa. Since its acquisition by the Moretti Polegato family in 1975, the estate has become a benchmark producer of Prosecco and a key ambassador of Italian sparkling wines worldwide. With a presence in over 130 markets and a strong focus on quality, sustainability, and hospitality, Villa Sandi continues to promote the culture and heritage of its territory on a global scale.

Media Contact
Morgana Germanetto – mgermanetto@colangelopr.com

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/villa-sandi-turns-its-vineyards-into-an-intelligent-ecosystem-for-precision-viticulture-302829846.html

SOURCE Villa Sandi

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Technology

RTX’s Pratt & Whitney Valox™ 1500 Engine Completes Key Design Milestone

Published

22 minutes ago

on

July 21, 2026

By

Valox 1500 design set to deliver an optimal mix of affordability, performance and speed to market for autonomous platforms

LONDON, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Farnborough International Airshow — Pratt & Whitney, an RTX (NYSE: RTX) business, has successfully completed a key design milestone for its Pratt & Whitney Valox™ 1500 engine, a new powerplant intended for semi-autonomous collaborative platforms. A comprehensive digital assessment confirms the design is on track to deliver an optimal mix of performance, affordability, and speed to market.

“This milestone reflects Pratt & Whitney’s agility and commitment to delivering critical capability to the warfighter at speed,” said Jill Albertelli, president of Pratt & Whitney’s Military Engines business. “By optimizing the engine design for reduced mission life and moving beyond traditional development timelines, our team is bringing forward a more affordable, scalable propulsion solution for emerging operational needs.”

Leveraging proactive investments in digital engineering, Pratt & Whitney has significantly de-risked the development timeline and is now focused on maturing the design for follow-on ground testing. In late 2025, Pratt & Whitney received a contract award valued at more than $10 million from the U.S. Air Force to advance the engine design.

Pratt & Whitney recently unveiled the Pratt & Whitney Valox™ engine family, which is engineered to deliver the speed, precision, and affordability required for modern collaborative combat systems and a broad range of emerging applications.

About Pratt & Whitney
Pratt & Whitney, an RTX business, is a world leader in the design, manufacture and service of aircraft engines and auxiliary power units for military, commercial and civil aviation customers. Since 1925, our engineers have pioneered the development of revolutionary aircraft propulsion technologies, and today we support more than 90,000 in-service engines through our global network of maintenance, repair and overhaul facilities.

About RTX
With more than 180,000 global employees, we push the limits of technology and science to redefine how we connect and protect our world. With industry-leading capabilities, we advance aviation, engineer integrated defense systems for operational success, and develop next-generation technology solutions and manufacturing to help global customers address their most critical challenges. The company, with 2025 sales of more than $88 billion, is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

For questions or to schedule an interview, please contact corporatepr@rtx.com

 

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/rtxs-pratt–whitney-valox-1500-engine-completes-key-design-milestone-302830230.html

SOURCE RTX

Continue Reading

Technology

CLO zFab Kit Now Available Globally: AI-Powered Fabric Digitization, No CLO License Required

Published

22 minutes ago

on

July 21, 2026

By

Standalone solution available via CLO-SET brings fast and accurate cutting-edge fabric digitization technology to brands, vendors, fabric mills and supply chain partners worldwide

NEW YORK, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — CLO Virtual Fashion today announced the availability of the CLO zFab Kit, a revolutionary AI-powered fabric digitization solution, now available for order and shipping to customers worldwide. The biggest news for the industry: the CLO zFab Kit can operate as a standalone solution without needing access to the CLO software to operate. Brands, vendors, fabric mills, fabric agents, and supply chain partners can digitize fabrics with full accuracy and produce ready-to-use digital materials via the web using CLOFAB via CLO-SET; a CLO software license is not needed.

“We’ve been eager to come up with ways to address some of the pain points of fabric digitization that our users and clients were going through. Quality was inconsistent, devices were slow and difficult to operate, pricey and often locked behind specialist workflows,” said Justin Kim, 3D Design & Implementation at CLO. “The CLO zFab Kit closes the gap. And by making it truly standalone via the web on CLO-SET, we’re putting accurate digital fabric in reach of the entire supply chain, not just the design teams already using CLO.”

What the CLO zFab Kit Delivers

The CLO zFab Kit combines three pieces of purpose-built hardware (zFab Cutter, zFab Scanner and zFab Draper) with CLO’s AI-powered software to capture a fabric’s physical and visual properties from a single circular sample. The output is a high-fidelity digital fabric, including PBR maps and physical property data, ready to drop into any workflow.

Three things set it apart:

Superior Accuracy. Replaces error-prone manual measurement with a streamlined cutting, scanning and analysis system, producing digital fabrics that can effectively drive production decisions.AI-driven Automation. Powered by proprietary AI and trained on CLO and swatchbook’s extensive fabric dataset, the CLO zFab Kit speeds up digitization while keeping results consistent across operators and locations.Seamless Integration. Outputs work natively in CLO’s platform and export cleanly to other 3D environments – no rework, no format gymnastics.

 

Built for the Fashion Supply Chain

While the CLO zFab Kit perfectly complements design teams using the CLO software, it was purposefully built with fabric mills, vendors, sourcing teams, and material libraries in mind. By providing suppliers with the best tools to create high-quality digital fabrics quickly, easily and consistently, the CLO zFab Kit can help cut physical sample shipments, shortens material approval cycles, and gives everyone in the workflow chain cleaner and better data to decide and act with more confidence.

The CLO zFab Kit is available globally for ordering today. It does not require CLO licenses to operate and use. Pricing, configuration, demo requests, and how-to-use tutorials are available at zfabkit.clo3d.com

About CLO Virtual Fashion

CLO Virtual Fashion is the creator of CLO, the leading 3D fashion design software used and trusted by designers, small businesses, and titans of the fashion industry to achieve a seamless digital workflow. With over two decades of research and development in accurate garment simulation, CLO Virtual Fashion’s mission is to empower users at every step of the garment journey, from concept to design, manufacturing to marketing, and fitting to styling. In addition to 3D garment design software, CLO Virtual Fashion’s products include CLO-SET (a cloud-based asset management and collaboration platform), CONNECT (a digital fashion hub and marketplace), and consumer-facing solutions such as e-commerce virtual fittings. CLO’s interconnected and ever-growing product ecosystem is built to power the future of everything related to garments.

View original content to download multimedia:https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/clo-zfab-kit-now-available-globally-ai-powered-fabric-digitization-no-clo-license-required-302830468.html

SOURCE CLO Virtual Fashion

Continue Reading

Technology

Arcfra Releases Neutree 1.1 to Help Enterprises Optimize GPU Utilization and Govern AI Inference at Scale

Published

22 minutes ago

on

July 21, 2026

By

SINGAPORE, July 21, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — Arcfra today announced the release of Neutree 1.1, a Model-as-a-Service platform for enterprise AI inference. The new version adds native GPU virtualization and expanded model governance capabilities, helping enterprises improve GPU utilization while managing model usage, quotas, access control, and security audits across AI applications.

As enterprise AI moves from pilots to production, organizations are running more diverse model workloads, including LLMs, OCR, ASR, embedding, rerank, and other task-specific models. GPU passthrough remains important for high-performance LLM inference, but lightweight and high-concurrency small models can leave GPU memory and compute capacity underused when each workload occupies a full GPU.

Neutree 1.1 adds native vGPU support on top of existing GPU passthrough and logical isolation capabilities. Users can enable GPU virtualization as needed and split GPU resources by memory and compute capacity, allowing one GPU to run multiple model instances for workloads such as OCR, speech, embedding, rerank, and multi-service concurrent inference. For performance-sensitive LLM workloads, users can continue using GPU passthrough to access full-card resources.

The release also provides a global view of node-level GPU usage, helping administrators allocate, schedule, and split resources based on actual demand. With hard-isolated resource partitioning, multiple model instances can run on the same GPU without interfering with each other, improving utilization while maintaining predictable service behavior.

Neutree 1.1 also extends its model gateway with a unified governance layer for internal and external models. As model services are connected to more business systems, platform teams need centralized visibility into usage, quotas, access permissions, and request-level traceability. Neutree helps teams manage token usage, request activity, API key quotas, rate limits, concurrency limits, model access scopes, access logs, and security audits without changing existing application calling patterns.

Neutree is a key component of Arcfra’s agentic AI infrastructure for AI inference. Together with Arcfra Enterprise Cloud Platform, it helps enterprises build production-grade, high-performance, and governable model inference infrastructure across compute, storage, Kubernetes, and observability layers.

Foxconn, the world’s largest electronics manufacturer, was among the first customers to try Neutree. By using its existing Arcfra infrastructure as a production-grade AI foundation, Foxconn adopted Neutree to streamline model delivery and unify compute and model resource management.

Neutree 1.1 is now open source on GitHub. For Neutree Enterprise, contact Arcfra.

View original content:https://www.prnewswire.com/apac/news-releases/arcfra-releases-neutree-1-1-to-help-enterprises-optimize-gpu-utilization-and-govern-ai-inference-at-scale-302830475.html

SOURCE Arcfra

Continue Reading

Trending