A GIS Analysis of New Zealand Terroir

The integration of digital technologies in vineyard management offers substantial opportunities for enhancing sustainability, efficiency, and grape quality.

In wine producing regions around the world, climate change has the potential to decrease the frequency and amount of precipitation and increase average and extreme temperatures. This will lower soil water availability and increase evaporative demand, thereby increasing the frequency and intensity of water deficit experienced in vineyards. Among other things, grapevines manage water deficit by regulating stomatal closure. The dynamics of this regulation, however, have not been well characterized across the range of Vitis vinifera cultivars. Providing a method to understand how different cultivars regulate their stomata, and hence water use in response to changes in soil water deficits will help growers manage vineyards and select plant material to better meet quality and yield objectives in a changing climate.

An integrated terroir characterization is currently realized in the French northern vineyard: “Anjou”. The concept of Basic Terroir Unit (B.T.U.) and its associated ground model “Rock, Alteration, Alterite” are used in this characterization. This work is coupled to a viticultural survey, based on parcels.

Context and purpose of the study. The genetic improvement of grapevines at the Edmund Mach Foundation (FEM) has evolved significantly since its inception, and its philosophy on sustainable viticulture through crossbreeding techniques aligns with the urgent need to reduce chemical use in agriculture.

The vineyard has experienced a general increase in yields mainly due to the elevated use of technology which caused a quality loss of grapes in more than one case. A large percentage of the Spanish vineyard is covered by a Denomination of Origin which limits the productive level of the vineyards as one of its regulations. The maximum production limit is a variable characteristic of each vineyard and is not usually regulated by agronomic criteria, and this explains the fact that each vineyard can reach high quality with a totally different yield from that set by the Denomination of Origin.