Innova Group’s engineering laboratory, Labor, is coordinating the ambitious EU-funded project called Vintage. The objective of this project is to offer to SME Associations the first integrated management solution supporting vine growers throughout the vineyard life cycle, from planting to harvesting, aiming at addressing quality and production variability issues by means of an advanced Decision Support System (DSS).This DSS will be based on the output of well-established and consolidated models applied to viticulture, and will assist the users in day to day management procedures, thanks to a user friendly web interface, assessing for instance the unique watering needs of each single parcel, controlling the growth phase of the grape, along with its vigour and maturity, optimizing at the same time the usage of fertilizers and pesticides and limiting operators intervention on the soil and on the plant. With the application of information technologies it will be possible to fine-tune wine production within the vineyard, maximising the oenological potential of the vineyards, and providing the vine-growers with up to date information.
First decision support systems have been installed in the Burgundy region in January 2014 driving the Vintage project in its operational and experimental phase; an important milestone for the project that will run until 2015.
The strength of the wine industry and in particular of the Burgundy region over the past years has been to successfully combine traditional methods with the use of high-technology tools. The entire wine industry is therefore looking forward to integrate the results of the Vintage project.
The importance of this experimental phase of the Vintage project has been reported in the article “Vintage: la Bourgogne partenaire d’un outil d’avenir”, published in the Journal de la Saone et Loire on 30 January 2014 (in French).
Learn more about the Vintage project on the website.
