Vignerons

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Unpredictable weather conditions and the impacts of climate change are causing Australian and indeed global vineyards to look to technology to solve their problems. One of the most promising technological solutions that has emerged for wine growers is drone engagement. Drones are now being used to give wine growers a clearer and more reliable picture of what is happening in the vineyard. Drones are helping wine makers across areas from determining the quality of grapes being grown, to estimates of how many grapes will be produced in the next harvest.

As a specific example, drones are helping vignerons identify vineyard areas where vigor is higher so wine growers can adjust their fertiliser program. Drones are also helping monitor water saturation and pest damage so wine growers know where to spray insecticides. Indeed, some vignerons have used tanks strapped to the sides of drones to spray their vineyards!

How drones are improving Australia’s tipple

Analysing grape health

Purpose-developed drones for vignerons now have a field uniformity algorithm that helps quantify the relative density and health of the grapes.

Managing temperature and humidity

Drones can be fitted with sensors that measure vineyard temperature and humidity and then they communicate this ‘real time’ information to the wine grower. Based on drone data, soil moisture monitors can also measure water volume at different soil depths.

The vegetation index

Drone technology is designed to give the vigneron the ability to look for patterns and crop issues. to do this drones produce normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) imagery that goes well beyond the manual capacity of any other monitoring method.