Pilots
The solution of VitiGEOSS has been validated in three vineyards in Spain, Italy and Portugal from Symington Family Estates, Mastroberardino and Familia Torres wineries.
The vineyards from the end users have been used for the calibration of the VitiGEOSS services and tested to be able to correct the models in future versions.
To ensure that the services developed in VitiGEOSS met the specific needs of end users, a co-production and user-centred design approach was adopted. This placed end users at the core of service design and development.
Through sharing their perspectives, knowledge and experiences, both researchers and users found common ground and learnt from each other, while ensuring the usefulness and usability of the VitiGEOSS services.
Portugal
Quinta do Ataide
This demonstration site is part of Symington Family Estates vineyards, one of the principal Port Wine and Douro wine producers and leading vineyard owner in the Douro Valley. Located in Douro Superior region, the vineyard testing VitiGEOSS solution had a total of 85 ha vineyards.
Integrating this project was a privilege, an opportunity to express the challenges we face to researchers, and thus promote lines of research aimed at solving the sector’s problems and create useful tools for winegrowers. On the other hand, being behind the scenes of a project like VitiGEOSS allowed us to get to know the most advanced technologies currently available, and understand the limitations and obstacles in their application and development.
Fernando Alves, Head of R&D, Symington
Italy
Mirabella Eclano Estate
This demonstration site is owned by Mastroberardino Società Agricola srl, an Italian winery located in the Campania region. The family owns an extensive network of vineyards in Italy, including a vineyard in Mirabella Eclano Estate, in the heart of the Taurasi DOC area which will serve VitiGEOSS as a validation scenario. The estate covers 65 hectares on hill territory with an altitude between 350 and 450 meters above sea level.
The company was motivated to join VitiGEOSS because the project met future challenges in viticulture, such as the need to sustainably increase production, mitigate the effects of climate change, improve the knowledge and the use of climate services, and introduce new solutions and technologies for viticulture management.
Antonio Dente, Viticulture Manager, Mastroberardino
Spain
Juneda
Torres, a family winery with vineyards in Spain, Chile and California, is the third end-user that will be validating VitiGEOSS solution. The demonstration site was located in Aranyó estate, in the area of Juneda (Lleida). It belongs to Torres since the end of the nineties and presents a typically continental climate about 400 meters above sea level.
Being involved in the co-production of the VitiGEOSS services has been an enriching experience for us. We embraced the opportunity to collaborate on a project that stands at the vanguard of viticulture technology, combining our knowledge of viticulture with sophisticated algorithms and geospatial data analysis. This initiative enabled us to use predictive modelling and estimation tools, embedding geospatial intelligence into our decision-making processes.
Montse Torres, Viticulture R&D Manager, Familia Torres
The agriculture sector in Europe
The European Union is the world’s biggest wine producer and winemaking is the main economic activity of many regions in the South of Europe.
Therefore, the wine sector invests heavily in state-of-the-art technology in order to develop innovative solutions for maintaining quality and sustainability requirements.
Sustainable agriculture
Agriculture plays an important role in climate change effects itself, being responsible for more than 20% of CO2 emissions. Sustainable agriculture has the purpose to maximise the net benefit for people by developing new farming practices and methodologies to meet current and future societal needs for food, ecosystem services and human health, whilst reducing the climate change negative effects.
According to some studies, the shifting patterns of agricultural production in response to climate change could cause a decrease between 25%-75% of major wine producing regions by 2050. This will have catastrophic direct effects from economic, social and cultural points of view.
A better prediction of the main grapevine phenological stages and being able to optimise critical vineyard management practices, will help to improve the wineries resources and tasks planning, and reduce the emissions of greenhouse gases as well as the amount of chemicals and fertilizers used on the fields, thus decreasing negative environmental externalities and climate change effects.
The use of Earth Observation data in agriculture
Satellite data make possible to extract useful indicators to promote a better management and planning of fields and vineyards, as well as the optimisation of innovative agricultural practices. The richness of remote sensing data is crucial to obtain up-to-date information on farmland and agricultural processes.
The use of open resources such as Earth Observation services can improve the efficiency of vineyards thanks to accurate mapping, novel production indicators, image and time series processing and an accurate and improved forecast.
