Fruit thinning Pinot Noir

We see the monitoring of environmental data as a critical element to vineyard management. We monitor weather and soil moisture. Given the variety of clones and root stock, irrigation management is given high priority. To that end soil moisture is monitored in real time with aquaflex sensors being interrogated via a mesh radio network that downloads logger data. Soil temperatures are also monitored. 5 sites have single sensors with another two sites having dual sensors. The second sensor is placed at a deeper level. This additional sensor can give a guide to the effectiveness of irrigation and can indicate over watering and / or waste of the water resource. The aquaflex sensor is New Zealand designed and made and we believe is leading edge. As a general approach in vineyard developing a lot of attention had been put on soil profiling and then working out irrigation on that basis. That seemed to be only half doing the job with the other half being actually seeing what was going on. Predictive irrigation ie to irrigate to soil types in a sense is putting the cart before the horse. Our approach was to irrigate and develop empirical data to establish the edge parameters by seeing the effect on the vines of recorded moisture levels and the usage of water by the plants. With good monitoring equipment such as the aquaflex sensor and data management software our results and developed knowledge have been spectacular. We continue to work closely with Streat Instruments the manufacturers of the Aquaflex system with the view of continual improvement. Our input being from a vineyard and operational perspective. We now monitor two separate vineyards with the latest radio network from our central office or from the vineyards office. The step up from single pass radio modems to this mesh system has unlimited application possibilities. For instance new inputs are available to each radio. We have utilised this function to monitor canopy temperatures around the fruit zone which is also useful in detecting frost for example. The sensor's on board data logger is now configured to store and forward data and therefore does not require the monitoring PC to be on 24/7. The low current requirement of the new radios means that the power supply problems of the past are now history. Battery voltage is remotely available on the network to easily monitor battery health and the C Cell alkaline cells should last 12 months +.