Making sense of vineyard variability in Australia

Abstract

Vineyards are variable. Grapegrowers and winemakers have known this for as long as they have been growing grapes and making wine, but in the absence of tools or methods to accurately observe and measure the variation, variability has been accepted as a fact of life and the majority of vineyards have been managed on the assumption that they are homogenous. Since vintage 1999, when the first winegrape yield monitor became commercially available in Australia, a major program of research has focussed on understanding the nature, extent and key drivers of variability in the winegrape production process, and on the opportunities to apply a precision agriculture approach to both viticultural management and winemaking. The results obtained to date support the introduction of a system of zonal vineyard management. Under this approach, rather than being managed uniformly, individual blocks can be split into zones in which the management of inputs to the production system can be applied differentially, and the outputs harvested selectively. A number of cost-effective supporting tools and technologies are available to support this approach including yield mapping, remote sensing and high resolution soil and topographic survey. This paper provides an overview of the development of precision viticulture in Australia.