04/24/06 High Tech Grape Monitoring

Last week's Grape Summit in Kennewick, Washington highlighted a number of advances in the grape growing industry. An on-going problem has always been estimating grape yields. Estimating grape yields is a time-consuming, laborious affair. But that could change, thanks to a high-tech helping hand from Agricultural Research Service (ARS) scientists in Prosser, Wash. ARS horticulturist Julie Tarara and colleagues have developed an automated system for estimating grape yields based on tension changes in the trellis wire used to support the vine crop. TARARA: It's off the shelf technology. We can run it in the research realm, we can run it in some commercial vineyards and we think what it's going to do for growers if this can get into a commercial package, is give you the opportunity to monitor the vineyard straight through from bud break to harvest, monitor fruit growth from bloom forward and monitor some of your cultural practices. Over several years if you can build databases of these tension values and look at them one year relative together you may also be able to do a fairly good on the fly yield prediction. The system utilizes a "load cell" to detect increases in trellis tension as vines grow and fruit matures. The system could also be used to monitor canopy irrigation cycles. TARARA: Every time the sprinkler irrigation runs you have quite a mass of water that sits on that canopy for a while until it evaporates. These load cells in this installation, they are sensitive enough that we know when the irrigation is running. That's today's Fruit Grower Report. I'm Greg Martin on the Northwest Ag Information Network.