Abstract
The European Digital Innovation Hub (EDIH) NOI – South Tyrol provides a comprehensive framework to accelerate digital transformation within the agrifood sector by combining technological expertise, applied research, and business support services. Through the “test-before-invest” approach, local small and medium-sized enterprises have engaged in collaborative projects with research institutions to validate and integrate advanced digital solutions into agricultural practice. This contribution presents a series of case studies addressing critical challenges in smart farming, including autonomous edge-computing nodes for plant health monitoring, predictive models for irrigation management, AI-based vision systems for viticulture and fruit growing, and digital decision-support tools for vineyard disease management. The results illustrate how multi-actor collaboration—linking enterprises, research centers, and technology providers—can enhance innovation capacity and foster the sustainable adoption of digital technologies in agriculture, with broader implications for efficiency, resilience, and competitiveness in Alpine and European contexts.