The relationship between the light environment in a vine canopy and wine quality has been studied for many years, but practical techniques to measure the light environment are only now being developed.
Many had hoped the using NDVI or “plant cell density” imagery taken from satellites, drones or planes would be able to do capture variation in your vines and allow you to highlight the areas of likely best quality. However using images of vines taken from above can have trouble differentiating between the “green” of vine leaves, and the “green” of undervine ground cover.
For Vintage 2020 - DJ’s is running out a system of using vertical canopy images, taken against the blue background of sky, to produce the best estimate of the light environment on your fruit as it ripens.
Ask us how this can be used to improve our vineyard returns.
Vertical canopy image taken with the VitiCanopy App. at EL-15 in a single wire cordon trained cv. Shiraz vineyard in McLaren Vale, South Australia.
Porosity image to the comparison between Canopy Porosity Zone Map (created by image analysis of canopy measure data 21-Jan-2019) and Satellite NDVI image (30-Jan-2019).
Blended image: NDVI image to the front.
Blended image: Porosity zones to the front.