Pruning 

Vineyard variability starts right at the beginning, at the pruning season. Most growers want to know their pruning quality and identify any underperforming areas.

You can capture data when you’re pruning and GreenView can identify your nodes, canes/cordons and vines at this stage. This can help to initially quantify your yield and give you a sense of the season to come. 

GreenView can also help identify other areas of variability in the vines at this stage, for instance where you’ve got 2 canes laid down when you should have 4 canes. This can indicate where your pruners are doing a good job or where they may need some extra training. 

Bud burst

Bud burst begins in the next stage of the season. After bud burst, GreenView can count the shoots individually and start to quantify where there’s heavy and/or low concentrations of shoots.

“If you’ve got a vineyard like mine where we need to come through and shoot-thin, you really want to target that shoot thinning. In some areas of our vineyard we have light areas, further down in the vineyard it’s really heavy. From using GreenView we know exactly which areas to target our shoot thinning – so we’re not just constantly walking the rows trying to work it out.” 

Fiona Turner, vineyard owner and CEO of Bitwise Agronomy

Inflorescence 

Our Bitwise Ag developers recently incorporated data for inflorescence into our GreenView system – so as well as counting nodes after pruning you can now count inflorescences later in the season. This gives you more data to increase accuracy of your yield predictions.

If you’re already a GreenView customer you will now see inflorescence counts on your dashboards if you have taken imagery at this growth stage. This new feature is in beta testing stage so as more people use the system our inflorescence counts across the board will become more and more accurate.

Canopy growth  

The next stage of the season we go through is when the canopy really starts to grow and we put wires up and trim the shoot tips. Growers want to be able to trim at the right time, and schedule the right blocks at the right time.

Throughout the season, GreenView can show you some important information – including where you’ve got stunted shoot growth, which can indicate sick vines, and where you’ve got excessive shoot growth sometimes right next to weaker areas. GreenView can identify those areas on a map with coordinates and photos so you know exactly where to send your staff to determine the cause.

Fruit set

After flowering is completed, bunch numbers are another indication of vineyard variability. After the canopy is trimmed we start to see bunches of grapes beginning to form. Often this is a time that you’ll really see variability with where the bunches are growing.  

“In my vineyard I have some vines with very few bunches, right next to vines that are thick with bunches of grapes. It’s that variability that makes it really hard to forecast. Now that I can capture the vines across the whole vineyard at superhuman speed, it makes it much easier to identify the variability. Being able to understand spatially my bunch distribution allows me to carry out targeted bunch thinning to reduce that variability.” Fiona Turner

Want to know how you could better understand variability on your vineyard? Find out more about GreenView and schedule a demo today.