Assessment of grapevine water status by ground-based hyperspectral imaging

Abstract

The wine industry worldwide is under considerable long-term pressure because of climate change, resulting in increased water scarcity and rising operational costs. The Vineyard of The Future (V oF) is an intemational and multidisciplinary initiative to establish fully instrumented vineyards for clirnate change research. One of the strategies proposed is the use of hyperspectral irnaging as a tool to assist in the estirnation of vine water status of grapevines. In th is study, outdoors hyperspectral irnages of the whole canopy were taken from 18 fi ve-year old Sangiovese ( Vitis vinifera L.) grapevines. The vines were grown outside in 70L pots near Piacenza (Italy). Images were taken over four dates during August 2011. Images After the Chilean wine crisis in the 1980s decade, in 1994 the vineyard plantations resumed. These plantations were done under an old technological paradigm, i.e., mass selection and the obtainment of plant material from renowned vineyards, without a prior sanitary and varietal selection-making. These vineyards normal! y present a mixture of cultivars and sorne pathological problerns, such as trunk canker, virus diseases and nematodes. A grapevine cultivar found mixed within other cultivars (including Cabernet-Sauvignon, Merlot and Cót rouge), inside a vineyard cv. Carmem!re at Palmilla (Colchagua Valley, Chile), were identified by classical ampelographic description and by molecular genetic markers (RAPD and AFLP). The agronomic traits of the unidentified and problematic cultivar, which presented an inflorescence necrosis phenomena, were characterized by pheno1ogica1 tracking (in re1ation to cv. Carmenere), detailed description of flowering phenomena, flower microscope slides and assessing the effect of cane girdling on inflorescence necrosis and fruit set.