The use of remote sensing for intra-block vineyard management

There is increasing scientific consensus that climate changeis the underlying cause of the prolonged dry and hot conditions that have increased the risk of extreme fire weather in many countries around the world. In December 2019, a bushfire event occurred in the Adelaide Hills, South Australia where 25,000 hectares were burnt and in vineyards and surrounding areas various degrees of scorching and infrastructure damage occurred. The ability to coordinate and plan recovery after a fire event relies on robust and timely data. The current practice for measuring the scale and distribution of fire damage is to walk or drive the vineyard and score individual vines based on visual observation. The process is time consuming, subjective, or semi-quantitative at best. After the December 2019 fires, it took many months to access properties and estimate the area of vineyard damaged. This study compares the rapid assessment and mapping of fire damage using high-resolution satellite imagery with more traditional ground based measures. Satellite imagery tracking vineyard recovery in the season following the bushfire is being correlated to field assessments of vineyard productivity such as canopy health and development, fertility and carbohydrate storage. Canopy health in the seasons following the fires correlated to the severity of the initial fire damage. Severely damaged vines had reduced canopy growth, were infertile or had very low fertility as well as lower carbohydrate levels in buds and canes during dormancy, which reduced productivity in the seasons following the bushfire event. In contrast, vines that received minor damage were able to recover within 1-2 years. Tools that rapidly and affordably capture the extent and severity of damage over large vineyard area will allow producers, government and industry bodies to manage decisions in relation to fire recovery planning, coordination and delivery, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their response.

Wine quality is strongly linked to climate. Quality scores are often driven by climate variation across different winegrowing regions and years, but also influenced by other aspects of terroir, including variety. While recent work has looked at the relationship between quality scores and climate across many European regions, less work has examined New World winegrowing regions. Here we used scores from three major rating systems (Wine Advocate, Wine Enthusiast and Wine Spectator) combined with daily climate and phenology data to understand what drives variation across wine quality scores in major regions of the Western US, including regions in California, Oregon and Washington. We examined effects of variety, region, and in what phenological period climate was most predictive of quality. As in other studies, we found climate, based mainly on growing degree day (GDD) models, was generally associated with quality—with higher GDD associated with higher scores—but variety and region also had strong effects. Effects of region were generally stronger than variety. Certain varieties received the highest scores in only some areas, while other varieties (e.g., Merlot) generally scored lower across regions. Across phenological stages, GDD during budbreak was often most strongly associated with quality. Our results support other studies that warmer periods generally drive high quality wines, but highlight how much region and variety drive variation in scores outside of climate.

The effects of climate change are seriously affecting the quality of wine grapes. High temperatures and drought cause imbalances in the chemical composition of grapes. The result is overripe grapes with low acidity and high sugar content, which produce wines with excessive alcohol content, lacking in freshness and not very aromatic. As a consequence, the search of varieties with capacity of produce quality grapes in adverse climate conditions is a good alternative to preserve the sustainability of vineyards. In this work, quality parameters of seven Vitis vinifera L. cultivars (five whites and two reds) recently recovered from extinction and grown under two different hydric regimes (rainfed and irrigated) were analyzed during the 2020 vintage. At harvest time, weight of 100 berries, must physicochemical parameters (brix degree, total acidity, malic acid, pH), and carbon and oxygen isotope ratios (δ13C, δ18O) were determined. Subsequently, varietal aroma potential index (IPAv) and total polyphenol index (TPI) were analyzed. Quality parameters, IPAv and TPI, showed significant differences between varieties and water regimes. Both red varieties, Moribel and Tinto Fragoso, stood out for their high aromatic and phenolic potential, which was higher under rainfed regime. Regarding to white varieties, Montonera del Casar and Jarrosuelto stood out in terms of varietal aroma potential. Montonera del Casar high acidity in its musts and Jarrosuelto showed the highest berry weights.

Currently, the main goal of agriculture is to promote the resilience of agricultural systems in a sustainable way through the improvement of use efficiency of farm resources, increasing crop yield and quality under climate change conditions. This last is expected to drastically modify plant growth, with possible negative effects, especially in arid and semi-arid regions of Europe on the viticultural sector. In this context, the monitoring of spatial behavior of grapevine during the growing season represents an opportunity to improve the plant management, winegrowers’ incomes, and to preserve the environmental health, but it has additional costs for the farmer. Nowadays, UAS equipped with a VIS-NIR multispectral camera (blue, green, red, red-edge, and NIR) represents a good and relatively cheap solution to assess plant status spatial information (by means of a limited set of spectral vegetation indices), representing important support in precision agriculture management during the growing season. While differences between UAS-based multispectral imagery and point-based spectroscopy are well discussed in the literature, their impact on plant status estimation by vegetation indices is not completely investigated in depth. The aim of this study was to assess the performance level of UAS-based multispectral (5 bands across 450-800nm spectral region with a spatial resolution of 5cm) imagery, reconstructed high-resolution satellite (Sentinel-2A) multispectral imagery (13 bands across 400-2500 nm with spatial resolution of <2 m) through Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) approach, and point-based field spectroscopy (collecting 600 wavelengths across 400-1000 nm spectral region with a surface footprint of 1-2 cm) in a plant status estimation application, and then, using Bayesian regularization artificial neural network for leaf chlorophyll content (LCC) and plant water status (LWP) prediction. The test site is a Greco vineyard of southern Italy, where detailed and precise records on soil and atmosphere systems, in-vivo plant monitoring of eco-physiological parameters have been conducted.

To digitally record and present all the origins of Austrian wines in the same perfect and clear way was the motivation for the Austrian Wine Marketing Board (Austrian Wine) to start with the project in 2018. In June 2021 the results were presented to the public in an online viewer showing all the designations of Austrian wine, available at https://austrianvineyards.com in a largely barrier-free manner. The online viewer provides tailored individual maps fitted to the respective zoom level. The smallest unit of wine-origins in Austria is called Ried and is displayed in a plot-specific manner highlighting areas under vine. Information on the Ried include administrative district, winegrowing municipality, cadastral municipality, large collective vineyard site, specific winegrowing region, generic winegrowing region, winegrowing area and, in many cases, an illustrative picture. Complementary data on the size, elevation (minimum-maximum), orientation (in 8 sectors plus flat) and gradient (minimum, maximum, average) are based on the area under vine according to the EU’s Integrated Administration and Control System. Additional information covers climate data. The diagrams are taken from the monthly breakdown of data in the annals of the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics, Austria provide a display of values for air temperature, precipitation, and sunshine hours for the reference year and the long-term average. Seasonal aggregated data on temperature, precipitation, and sunshine hours complete the display. Short descriptions with emphasis on geology and soil, field name in historical maps, etymology of the denomination, and main planted variety complements the available information for the main designations in the online viewer. These descriptions are compiled by winegrowers, geologists, historians, and journalists. All the information and data can be extracted to a pdf-file. Printed vineyard maps are also available. Missing content regarding wine origins in Styria will be completed in winter 2021/22.