A 4D high resolution vineyard soil assessment for soil-hydrological interpretation in combination with automated data analysis and visualization to manage site-specific grape and wine quality

Plant water status of grapevine plays a critical role in affecting berry and final wine chemical composition. The environmental variabilities existing in vineyard system have significant impacts on plant water status, but it is challenging to individualize environmental factors from the temporal and spatial variabilities in vineyard. Therefore, there is need to monitor the ecophysical variation through utilizing precision viticulture tools in order to minimize the separation in berry composition. This study aims at delineating vineyard into different management zones based on plant water status explained by soil texture, and utilize differential harvest to equilibrate the final berry and wine composition.

The wine industry produces an enormous amount of waste every year. A wider inclusion of disregarded by-products in the human diet or its use as a source of bioactive compounds is a good strategy for reducing waste. It will not only introduce an added value to a waste product but also come upon the European Union and United Nations’ demands towards more sustainable agricultural approaches and circular economy.

In-season vineyard pest management relies on proper timing, selection, and application of products. Most of the research on pest management tends to focus on the influence of regional conditions on these aspects, with an emphasis on product timing and efficacy evaluation. One aspect that is not fully vetted in various vineyard regions is application (sprayer) technology. The purpose of this study was to determine the influence of regional conditions on sprayer performance in commercial wine grape vineyards in eastern Washington.

Vineyards harbor a myriad of microorganisms that interact with each other and with the grapevines. Some microorganisms are plant pathogens, such as the oomycete Plasmopara viticola that causes grapevine downy mildew. Others, such as plant growth promoting bacteria and disease biocontrol agents, have a positive influence on vine health. The present study aims to (1) investigate whether vine-based culture media increase the cultivability of the grapevine microbiota, in comparison to standard culture media and (2) identify and isolate bacterial taxa naturally present in grapevine leaves and significantly more abundant in plots showing low susceptibility to downy mildew.

The application of remote and proximal sensing is a fast and efficient method to monitor grapevine vegetative and physiological parameters and is considered valuable to derive information on associated yield and quality traits in the vineyard. Further details can be obtained by the application of molecular analysis at the gene expression level aiming at elucidating how pathways controlling the formation of different grape quality traits are influenced by spatial variability. This work aims at evaluating intra-vineyard variability in grape composition at harvest and at comparing this with remotely sensed canopy vegetation data and molecular-based approaches.