PHYTOMONITORING TECHNIQUE FOR TUNING IRRIGATION OF VINEYARDS

It is well known that a proper irrigation may improve quality of grapes.
The question is what criteria need to be used for evaluating plant water status in order to realize any particular irrigation strategy.
Limitations of soil moisture monitoring and methods for evaluating crop evapotranspiration are well known.
At the same time, physiological indicators for assessing vine water status have attracted the attention of many viticulturists.
The laborious pressure chamber technique is hardly applicable in practice.
Automated phytomonitoring seems to be a good alternative for the following reasons:

• It enables continuous long-term monitoring of canopy temperature, sap flow rate, trunk and shoot diameter variations, which are good indicators for observing diurnal fluctuations of transpiration and turgor.
  The diameter indicators are useful for long-term monitoring as well.
• The phytomonitoring indicators make possible very early detection of any divergence in plant physiological status.
  It helps a grower to tune or adjust irrigation according to desired plant water status.
• Collection of the phytomonitoring seasonal records (so-called “phytomonitoring portraits”) creates an unique database for every vineyard, enabling a grower to reproduce, to a certain extent, the desired phytomonitoring portrait associated with the fortunate combination of natural factors and resulting quality.

Since 1997, phytomonitoring systems have been used in many Israeli vineyards under the supervision of local grape growers and winemakers.
Encouraging results have been obtained in most of cases.
Some growers have reported significant improvement in grape quality.

International Symposium on Irrigation and Water Relations in Grapevine and Fruit Trees

Y. Ton, M. Kopyt, N. Nilov

wine grapes, sensors, quality, Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot, Chardonnay

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2004.646.16