Three proximal sensors to estimate texture, skeleton and soil water storage in vineyards

Proximal sensors are becoming widely used in precision viticulture, due to the quick, easy and non-invasive identification of soil spatial variability. The apparent soil electrical conductivity (ECa) is the main parameter measured by sensors, which is correlated to many factors, like soil water content, salinity, clay content and mineralogy, rock fragments, bulk density, and porosity. This study compares three different sensors to delineate soil boundaries and estimate clay, skeleton content and available water (AWC) in a vineyard of the Chianti region (Central Italy). All three sensors produced ECa maps with similar pattern. Although the correlations between ECa, clay and skeleton content were usually moderate, the correlations between ECa and some important hydrological parameters, namely field capacity (FC), wilting point (WP) and available water capacity (AWC), was very high.