Two years ago, I wrote an article on AI in the vineyard for WBM. Feel free to read that article here…if you want. Otherwise, my basic argument was that although AI will eventually play a role in how we farm grapes, it’s a long way off compared to other industries and even other crops. We who grow grapes are the last ones to see such innovation. And since then, AI has grown exponentially. If two years ago you were playing around with Chat GPT to create bizarrely distorted images and learn about tax loopholes, you can now go onto the likes of Claude and have it just create a website for you from a single prompt. Chatbots like this have essentially eliminated the need for entry-level coders. However Claude is a computer, so it makes sense that it’s gotten very good at writing code for other computers. Similarly Chat GPT has digested the entire internet, and curates any answer for you by plucking it from its vast network of information. Sometimes its correct, and other t

Harvest has wrapped. It's raining. And the only thing on your calendar is that pesky meeting to finalize your budget for next year. Here are some things Advanced Viticulture can help you out with:  Soil moisture probes: see how deeply irrigations percolate and how quickly water gets depleted. Florapulse plant stress sensors: track water stress and maximize wine quality, sans pressure bomb. Weather stations: don't just talk about your terroir, quantify it Frost monitoring: monitor temperatures and set alerts for dangerous frost events. Valve automation: stop sending someone to that far-flung vineyard just to turn a valve. Flow/pressure monitoring: Keep track of your irrigation efficiency and see just how much water you're actually using.  Tank/reservoir/well depth monitoring: how much water are you working with? Know what's available to you whenever and wherever. Did your fruit get rejected this year? How about leveling up your game with Advanced

Who (or what) is this eddy you keep talking about? Efficient water management has never been more critical for agriculture and specifically for viticulture. High-end viticulture needs to manage water to not only cut costs, but to keep quality high in a market of oversupply and buyers who hold the upper hand over the grower. High production viticulture may not need the water management finesse for quality that high-end viticulture does, but regulatory demands for groundwater protection as well as limitations on water deliveries push growers into making the most out of every gallon. Here at AV, we’ve made use of impactful technologies to help growers irrigate efficiently and control vine stress to improve wine quality from their vineyards. Our primary tools have been the soil moisture probe and, more recently, the Florapulse microtensiometer. Both tools have been indispensable and even more so now that we have our own data portal to view and analyze these data streams. More recen

We have a new water and weather information portal we'd love to show you. We designed the portal ourselves, based on decades of working with other data systems. We can connect to most data telemetry systems out there - probably yours too. We'll be demo-ing the portal at our Unified Wine and Grape Symposium booth 1245. We are now working with Li-COR's LI-710 evapotranspiration (ET) sensor. This sensor provides a direct measurement of REAL ET, not a derived version of ET that other systems use. This is an eddy covariance based technology that measures actual water vapor flux. We will have the sensor in our booth and would be excited to discuss it with you. We are now working with Lumo automated valve technology and are excited to add them to our growing list of technology partners. We continue to deploy Florapulse microtensiometers, which measure plant water stress continuously. These devices have shown themselves to be the perfect adjunct to our continuous soil moisture me

Afternoon Brief, March 26th

President of Treasury Americas, Ben Dollard to Keynote 2024 Wine Sales Symposium: Wine Industry Network (WIN) has announced Ben Dollard, President of Treasury Americas, as the distinguished keynote speaker for the upcoming Wine Sales Symposium...

I once saw a commercial that said: “forget everything you thought you knew about slip covers”. So I did. Admittedly I don’t know a lot about slip covers. I do know quite a bit about plant stress. Up until recently, our constant flow of data on soil moisture has been studied along with weekly spot measurements of leaf water potential via pressure bomb. This year we switched to FloraPulse® plant stress sensors and holy moly, having real time data on plant stress is pretty wild. First of all, how much data are we talking about? This graph compares our real time plant stress measurements with what would be weekly midday pressure bomb measurements. Look at how much data we were missing just by looking at only weekly snapshots of plant stress. There is a lot of stuff going on those other 6 days, not to mention at night. Pressure bomb measurements are hypothetical. Stars are placed where weekly measurements would be made to illustrate data missed by manual measurements.

For the 2023 season, we are launching an upgraded, automated system that monitors plant stress, soil moisture and irrigation system operation. Combining new technology with proven methods, this system uses FloraPulse microtensiometer sensors to measure continuous plant stress, Aquacheck probes to evaluate soil moisture and pressure sensors for irrigation feedback. This is all conveniently integrated in a cloud-based digital platform. We’re excited to partner with these excellent companies as well as our tried and true telemetry partners Ranch Systems, Davis Instruments, WiseConn and more. No more pressure chamber needed! FloraPulse Visit Advanced Viticulture at Unified Wine & Grape Symposium booth 2034 Advanced Viticulture provides consulting and technical services for the wine grape industry. With decades of vineyard water management expertise, we not only sell equipment, but we know how best to employ it for water savings and for the best expression of wine from a vine