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The University of Donja Gorica is the coordinator of the MONTEVITIS project, the main goal of which is to strengthen and homogenize UDG and its faculties and laboratories for research and collaboration capacities and performance, both in Montenegro and throughout Europe, in specific topics of mitigating and adapting to climate change in viticulture. The team from the University of Donja Gorica is led by Professor Marko Simeunovic, and the project is financed by the European Commission within the Horizon program.

As the coordinator of the project, the University of Donja Gorica gathered respectable partners from Europe. MONTEVITIS EU partners are from countries with world-renowned viticultural, demarcated areas and have many years of experience in research and development and innovations in viticulture and climate studies. The project partners are the University of Tras-Os-Montes and Alto Douro and Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação from Portugal, the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research from Germany, the University of Florence from Italy and the Institute of Science and Technology from Luxembourg. UDG also invited several partners from Montenegro to expand the impact of the project, namely the Institute for Hydrometeorology and Seismology Podgorica, Rajkovic Rade, BUK DOO for production, trade in goods and services, export-import, Podgorica, DOO for production, trade, trade and services export import MNB Kruna-Ulcinj and Vucinic Dragica. Besides being able to share valuable knowledge and experience, all partners will benefit from research, networking, capacity building and knowledge transfer processes within this action and ongoing research projects and general strengthening of many components of sustainability.

The project will set up, integrate and validate the following topics: 1) use and adaptation of existing analytical and modeling tools for assessing the effects of climate change at regional levels, 2) understanding these effects on the course of physiological processes in the grapevine, yield, ripening and quality of grapes and wines of different varieties and 3) definition of precision viticulture technologies and usage scenarios in vineyard management.

MONTEVITIS builds capacity with knowledge of climate change effects in grapevine modeling, software analytics (eg dataset processing) and smart applications of ICT technologies such as hardware/IoT devices and AI/ML as part of practical climate change mitigation strategies and adaptation measures. UDG can now foster the transition of the entire ecosystem in Montenegro through MONTEVITIS: in its pioneering role of managing an EU project of this scale, by encouraging new ways of thinking through an EU-integrated and commercially supported S&T initiative, and by synergizing its multidisciplinary expertise and activities. The existing expertise, knowledge and capacities at UDG in the digitization of food production and various risk assessments, together with basic competences in the field of ICT, will be used and expanded by MONTEVITIS through a two-tiered cooperation model that will be explored with 4 local and 5 European partners.