Regional Institute of Wine and Oil

Avigere project, meeting on March 18th

In recent years, the agricultural world has expressed the need to deepen the wealth of knowledge on site-specific agronomic management in order to combine research activities and the Information and Communication Technology (ICT) sector. Precision Viticulture aims to maximize the efficiency of entrepreneurial choices in the management of wine-growing properties. The AVIGERE project started its actions in October 2011 and had the objective of applying site-specific management to the "vineyard system" in Sicily.

Plan

The knowledge of the vigor of the vine, using the NDVI index, acquired by Proximal and Remote sensing and the comparison with the agronomic data collected in the field, constituted the first design step. Once the acquisitions were validated (proximal, remote, field) and suitable correlation models were applied, thematic maps were produced in some of the company's "guide" vineyards, for the Catarratto, Grillo, Grecanico and Nero d'Avola varieties. The installation of a WSN (Wireless Sensor Network) in these vineyards has made it possible to know the variables of temperature, humidity and water content of the soil, in order to optimize the phytodefense (reduction in the number of treatments and doses per hectare) and improve the irrigation efficiency (water balance for targeted interventions). The information produced by the WSN network is available to companies in real time via the web. All the information acquired forms the information layers of the company's GIS (Territorial Information System) that specially trained technicians are able to use. With AVIGERE, a WebGis has been created (www.wbgisavigere.it) at the service of wine companies that access it with a specific password.