ITK Vigne, decision support tool for viticulture

Abstract

Water is essential to the development of any plant. As a result of current climate change, good management is required in many areas, especially in viticulture in a context of increasing competitiveness.

Since 2010, the decision support tool ITK Vine is developed to allow to quantify continuously water stress of the plant and make the link with the potential quality of the final product (grapes) through mechanistic model of the Soil-Vine-Atmosphere continuum. The tool allows to control the hydric itineraries, or the way of vine management in areas where irrigation is not possible, based on objective quality grapes.

Hydric pathways optimization, through the tool and an expert system, allows better management of water resources; among other substantial savings in areas already irrigated, better dimension of hydraulic schemes, better resource planning and allocation…

In addition, ITK Vine showed that beyond irrigation, it could be used for strategic and tactical management of the vineyard. Indeed, the tool can also be used for reasoning upstream planting distances, the size of rows and the pruning system or to refine the selection plots at harvest time. ITK Vine is totally involved in a strategy of precision viticulture. This is a useful DST, which is constantly developed in contact with viticulturists; actually we are working on grass cover integration strategies in direct relationship with the soil water.