Research & Innovation

The Ginger-Bee experiment within the EUHubs4Data project aims to enhance the digital interaction between gardeners, gardening brands, and garden centers. Tomappo's involvement centers on building a knowledge graph to link user-generated data with external sources, thereby providing personalized and contextually relevant information to users and improving B2B efficiency. This innovation is geared towards aiding larger brands and garden center chains in their digitalization and marketing efforts. The project also emphasizes the environmental benefits of home gardening and aims to develop a more intelligent data system to improve Tomappo's user experience and business performance.

In the SUAVE project, Tomappo advanced sustainable urban gardening by focusing on raised beds and balcony gardening. The project developed an AI-powered retrieval augmented generation (RAG) feature tailored to urban gardeners, trained on diverse sources from university research to gardening influencers. SUAVE introduced personalization through user-selectable personas, enhancing engagement among younger, sustainability-minded gardeners. The project also strengthened Tomappo's B2B offering through new strategic partnerships with raised bed producers, diversifying revenue streams and expanding market reach.

The CARROTS bilateral TTX project connected Tomappo with Lifely's Agrumino wireless sensors, adding a powerful IoT layer to the digital gardening assistant. This integration enabled gardeners to monitor temperature and soil humidity directly within Tomappo, enhancing the app's garden planner. The project demonstrated how IoT and digital gardening can converge to provide smarter, more sustainable solutions, while laying the groundwork for future applications such as sensor-based meteorological data and further open-source development.

Within the Climate KIC RIS accelerator and Climathon in Slovenia, Tomappo developed a seed exchange platform to address biodiversity loss and genetic erosion. The seed exchange feature empowered gardeners to collect, grow, and share heirloom seeds, supporting seed banks in preserving agricultural biodiversity. Climate KIC provided not only funding but also knowledge, coaching, and exposure to global sustainability challenges, enabling Tomappo to expand its mission from hobby gardening to active climate action.

Tomappo played a crucial role in the Turntable project, mainly by offering tailored gardening advice to the elderly. This innovative approach not only facilitated their engagement in gardening but also served as an effective tool for teaching them ICT skills, leveraging their inherent interest in gardening. The project's findings demonstrated that using Tomappo significantly enhanced the perceived quality of life among the elderly participants. This blend of practical gardening guidance with ICT education underlines Tomappo's effectiveness in improving both the mental and physical wellbeing of seniors.

Tomappo demonstrated its versatility in the FNS-Cloud project by effectively utilizing data and services from the FNS-Cloud and contributing valuable research data on lifestyle, particularly gardening and family meal planning, back to the cloud. The project involved developing a family meal planning application linked with data from Tomappo, providing users with personalized meal options based on the produce they grow. Additionally, Tomappo's seed exchange platform played a key role in crowdsourcing green beans samples from its user community for nutritional analysis, thereby offering insights into the nutritional value of home-grown vegetables.