A collaboration between industry, research and government is creating a digital platform to ensure the Riverland wine region in South Australia remains internationally competitive. Kim Berry spoke to the executive chair of Riverland Wine Chris Byrne. This article was first published in Food & Drink Business April 2020.
The warm climate wine producing Riverland region in South Australia runs 330 kilometres along the Murray River, east of the Barossa Valley. It is the largest wine producing region in Australia, home to 1000 wine grape growers with 20,600 hectares of vines.
Chris Byrne is the executive chair of Riverland Wine, the body representing winegrape growers and wineries in the region. Byrne told Food & Drink Business that the area was, “very very good at growing grapes and probably the best in the world at irrigating” but needed to become more competitive.
“We are very much a global trading business these days and in direct competition with the other southern hemisphere producing nations South Africa, Chile and Argentina. They have a significant competitive advantage over us in terms of their lower labour costs.
“The advantage we have is a much higher standard of living, which means higher labour costs, but we also we have much higher standards of education, know-how, and capability.
“We took the view that for us to become more competitive, we could and should undertake the necessary studies to increase competitiveness by reducing our cost of production. In other words, take out some of the costs we’re incurring which we don’t really need.”
The group approached the University of Adelaide, the idea being, the growers knew how to grow good grapes but wanted to see how technology could help them.
“We wanted to get into remote sensing and digital technology, and see where digital platforms, robotics and remote sensing devices could take costs out of production,” Byrne says.
The digital platform that resulted, VitiVisor, came from a $5 million digital technologies fund supporting on-farm decision making for winegrape production. The collaboration includes the University of Adelaide, Riverland Wine and Wine Australia, with support from UniSA and Primary Industries and Regions SA.
It brought together researchers in viticulture, engineering, remote sensing, farm economics, water accounting, artificial intelligence, machine learning and robotics, to work with grapegrowers and their deep knowledge of vineyard production and processes.
Byrne says: “We explained we were nowhere near utilising the digital platforms to the extent they are in other agricultural industries.”
Leading up to vintage, growers take maturitive samples several times a week for four to six weeks to determine the best time for harvesting. For Byrne, that is a simple example of where there could be potential to save costs.
“The questions was, is there technology available that could help us in the sampling and analysis that would remove some of those hours we spend in the vineyards.”
The initial focus for Riverland Wine has been on basic considerations like reducing water usage, gaining greater understanding of the phenology of the grapevine as it moves through the growing season, soil moisture and nutrients.
Building the platform
VitiVisor will collect information direct from the vineyard via cameras and sensors and analyse the large amounts of data produced.
VitiVisor then assesses a vineyard’s performance and, in a first, offers coordinated advice on management practices for irrigation, pruning, fertiliser, fungicide and pesticide applications.
It can measure canopy growth, fruit production, sap flow and soil moisture. The information is displayed as a dashboard, giving growers a quick snapshot of what is happening in their vineyards. It is then a simple process to share information about vineyard performance with advisors.
“It means growers can track and predict how actions like the application of water, fertiliser and herbicides and various canopy management strategies relate to vineyard outcomes such as fruit yield and quality,” Byrne says.
The vineyard level information can also be combined with market and farm cost information, which can guide decisions to maximise farm returns.
Byrne says it has been a shift in thinking for those involved. “We are still in the trial stages, but those who’ve been most directly involved are really enthusiastic. In about two years we will have a lot more evidence of its value.”
Precision Decisions
Soil moisture monitors have been used for a long time and are used to inform irrigation practices, but VitiVisor is giving grapegrowers a more sophisticated picture.
Byrne says: “Soil moisture is one thing, but the atmosphere on the day, the direction of the wind, the temperature, all of those factors has a part to play as well. We’re beginning to see remote sensing devices used to measure things like humidity, and the rates of the rate of evapotranspiration. We can even measure the rate of sap flow through the trunk of the vine or a tree.”
The interconnectedness of a vineyard also benefits greatly from the technology, he says.
The leaf area index looks at the ratio of an area of grapevine to air. The critical components for growing and ripening grapes are air and light.
To manipulate the canopy to allow more of those involves managing the vine’s – or cane’s – growth and the best way to do that is through how much water it receives.
“Technology lets us make that decision with precision. If you begin to just fractionally ease back on the water that might be applied each day, you might cut back by five to fifteen per cent, depending on the variety. Then you just progressively send signals to the vines to slow down growth.
“It’s quite remarkable how the vines can read those signals, slow down the growth, lignify the canes, and you’ve got a much more balanced canopy,” he says.
The added benefit is an optimal canopy also reduces mildews and other diseases, which means reducing the need for spraying, another direct cost benefit to the grower on one of the biggest costs to a vineyard.
“Not starting up the tractor means no vehicle, no labour, no chemicals, and no more water to spray. In our region it’s quite common for growers to spray six to ten times a year.
“Even if you can reduce that to five, it means a dramatic saving on all of those input costs, labour, diesel, chemicals, water as well as the capital cost of equipment.
“The right range of sensors strategically placed around the vineyard, with the right sort of digital data inputs can be integrated in such a way that they can be presented back to the grower in the form of a dashboard. By having algorithms that will read those inputs and come up with the best, the most appropriate formula, you’re beginning to have a vineyard that is a lot more efficient,” he says.
For Byrne, the project is a key part of the company’s strategic plan to transition the industry to a new wine era by building members’ knowledge, rebuilding the brand and influencing industry decisions. The technology will empower and enable growers to achieve excellence in all aspects of their wine growing and winemaking.
