New technologies
help realise Vineyard
of the Future
By Nick Carne
S
outh Australia’s vision of
a “vineyard of the future”
is already producing results
for the vineyards of today.
University of Adelaide researchers
with combined expertise in
engineering and plant biology have
developed three new techniques
for monitoring grape and vine
performance, with others in
the pipeline.
The first – an iPhone app to measure
canopy growth – is being beta tested
by a leading wine company prior to
being released through iTunes.
The second is a new way of measuring
vine water status using near-infrared
spectroscopy (wave lengths above
our visual range). The aim is a
“point-and-click” measure of how
much water stress a vine is under.
“In that range there are strong
absorption peaks corresponding
to water, so you can look at the
absorption of these wavelengths as a
measure of how much water is in the
leaf,” said project leader Professor
Steve Tyerman, who is a chief
investigator with the ARC Centre of
Excellence in Plant Energy Biology.
The third technique uses impedance
spectroscopy to measure grape
quality, in much the same way as
measuring fat levels in humans. An
electrode is attached to a berry, an
alternating current passes across it,
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and from this you can tell how the
cells are behaving in the berry.
“Are they leaky or degraded? How
much sugar does the berry contain.
All this can be worked out from
a single measurement,” Prof
Tyerman said.
To test these and other techniques,
he and his colleagues established
what they call their “vineyard of
the future” – a one-hectare vineyard
on the Waite Campus equipped with
sophisticated sensors and image
analysis equipment.
“The aim is to monitor the vineyard
at different levels to see how
efficiently things are working and
how well the vines are performing,
almost to the point where you could
have hardly any visits necessary by
people,” he said.
“Ultimately you could have a control
system in front of you, with the