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IVES 9 IVES Conference Series 9 International Congress on Grapevine and Wine Sciences 9 2ICGWS-2023 9 Evaluation of terroir suitability for vine cultivation in new areas using geographic multi-criteria decision support

Evaluation of terroir suitability for vine cultivation in new areas using geographic multi-criteria decision support

Abstract

Based on historical vine cultivation, the recent development of wine production in Drama wine region (Greece) has led to vine cultivation expansion of white and red varieties. The current cultivation of 500 ha of vineyards is expected to increase in the coming years. Natural terroir units (NTU) have been designed recently to support the production of high quality wines in the region [1]. The aim of this work is to evaluate the relevancy of the proposed NTUs regarding their suitability to produce wines of specific sensorial identity, and to provide guidelines for correct site selection for the expanding wine industry of the region. The FAO Framework for Land Suitability Analysis was adapted to cover the main categories of input data: soil, climate, topography and other environmental properties [2]. The weights of each input data category have been developed with Analytical Hierarchical Process (AHP) based on interviews with the viticulturalists of the main wine producers. The geographic analysis was performed using the Agricultural Land Use Evaluation System (ALUES), which is based on the open-source statistical software R. The results reveal that the majority of the agricultural area is marginally to adequately suitable for the main white vine varieties currently cultivated, namely cv. Sauvignon blanc, with the exception of the cooler areas. On the contrary, red varieties (notably cv Cabernet Sauvignon) were  found to be more suitable to occupy the central part of the wine producing area. Nevertheless, it is possible to allocate white varieties to a wider range of sites with the adaptation of viticultural management.

Acknowledgements: The work presented is co‐financed by the ERDF and Greek national funds.

References:

1)  Karapetsas, N. et al, (2023). Delineating Natural Terroir Units in Wine Regions Using Geoinformatics. Agriculture, 13, 629, DOI:10.3390/agriculture13030629

2)  Bilas, G. et al., (2022). Land Suitability Analysis as a Tool for Evaluating Soil-Improving Cropping Systems. Land, 11, 2200, DOI:10.3390/land11122200

DOI:

Publication date: October 5, 2023

Issue: ICGWS 2023

Type: Article

Authors

Thomas Alexandridis1*, Nikolaos Karapetsas1, George Bilas1, Sefafeim Theocharis2, Stefanos Koundouras2

1 Laboratory of Remote Sensing, Spectroscopy and Geographical Information Systems, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124 Thessaloniki, Greece
2 Laboratory of Viticulture, School of Agriculture, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, 54124, Greece

Contact the author*

Keywords

DSS, land suitability analysis, geographic information systems

Tags

2ICGWS | ICGWS | ICGWS 2023 | IVES Conference Series

Citation

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