When we first announced the event, it was planned to be live, part of the ASEV National Conference in dreamy Monterey, CA. The organizing committee—Russ Smithyman (NGRA Board Chair), Keith Striegler (E. & J. Gallo Winery), Terry Bates (Cornell), Mason Earles (UC Davis) and I—mapped out two full days: one day of conference proceedings and a day of tours and demonstrations of precision viticulture tools, technologies and best practices at vineyards in the Monterey AVA. It was difficult, deciding to hold the event via Zoom. And of course it meant foregoing the field day. But we agreed that, given the uncertainty around vaccines and variants, air travel and gatherings, and our mutual desire to keep speakers and attendees safe, it would be most prudent to pivot. So, on June 21, we produced a hybrid digital event, where most presentations were pre-recorded, but our closing keynoter (Nick Dokoozlian, E. & J. Gallo Winery), all moderators, all panelists and all Q&A discussions were live on Zoom. It went off without a hitch, thanks in large part to a grant from the USDA-NIFA Agriculture and Food Research Initiative.

President

Join us for the second installment of our New-Scientist Engagement Series with a lunchtime (Pacific Time) talk on Monday, July 26, with the timely theme of “HEAT!” Plant Physiologist Megan Bartlett and her colleague at UC Davis Brian Bailey, who specializes in modeling and plant simulation tools, will be our guests.

These events are designed to introduce NGRA Board and Research Committee members and interested industry stakeholders to newer scientists (and/or newer programs) supporting grape-related research. The events will provide an opportunity for two-way dialogue between industry stakeholders and selected scientists, to learn about their work, and provide feedback and input on program goals and industry needs. The events are free of charge and open to all. Register now!

On June 29 and July 1, respectively, Drs. Andy Walker and Deborah Golino will retire their longstanding posts at UC Davis.

Professor and geneticist Andy Walker, writes Wine Spectator, “has educated hundreds of winemakers, grapegrowers and breeders, and often educated their kids or even their grandkids.” He's edited ASEV’s American Journal of Enology and Viticulture and directed numerous master's and Ph.D. studies in viticulture and enology at UC Davis. He's bred five rootstocks that are resistant to root knot nematodes, and in 2019—his 30th year at the university—he released five grape varieties that are resistant to Pierce’s Disease. Andy has been a faculty member of the Department of Viticulture and Enology since 1989, the same year he began breeding grapes.

After 27 years of service, Deborah Golino will retire as Director of Foundation Plant Services (FPS) and Cooperative Extension Specialist. FPS is a self-supporting service unit at UC Davis, dedicated to the distribution of disease-tested, true-to-identity plant materials with programs for grapes, strawberries, fruit and nut trees, sweet potatoes and roses. Under Deborah’s leadership FPS and its programs have grown considerably. She revived the long-dormant grape importation program; was instrumental in founding the National Clean Plant Network (NCPN), serving as Chair of the NCPN-Grapes Committee from its inception; and she’s grown the FPS grape collection to more than 900 cultivars. It is the source of all material for the California Grapevine Registration & Certification Program. Deborah also has been involved with NGRA since its inception and serves on our Science Advisory Council.

We thank both Andy and Deborah for their incredible dedication to and advancements for the grape and wine industry. Retirement celebrations will be in May 2022 for Andy and this fall for Deborah.

In late May, the USDA published its 90-Day Progress Report on Climate-Smart Agriculture and Forestry, considered an important step in advancing President Biden’s January Executive Order on Tackling the Climate Crisis at Home and Abroad and shift toward a whole-department approach to climate solutions. “America’s farmers, ranchers, and forest landowners have an important role to play in combating the climate crisis and reducing greenhouse gas emissions,” the Order states, “by sequestering carbon in soils, grasses, trees, and other vegetation and sourcing sustainable bioproducts and fuels.” Through research, conservation practices and partnerships, USDA aims to find solutions to agricultural challenges, enhance economic growth and create new streams of income for farmers, ranchers, producers and private foresters.

The National Science Foundation and the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy this month announced the formation of the National Artificial Intelligence Research Resource Task Force. Via two reports (an interim report in May 2022 and a final report in November 2022), this federal advisory committee will develop an implementation roadmap for the National AI Research Resource, a shared research infrastructure providing AI researchers and students across all scientific disciplines with access to computational resources, high-quality data, educational tools and user support.

The New Zealand wine industry’s Bragato Research Institute (BRI) has appointed Jeffrey Clarke as its new Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Clarke was previously General Manager Advocacy & General Counsel at New Zealand Winegrowers and took up the CEO role on an interim basis in early April following the resignation of MJ Loza. Mr. Clarke has worked for New Zealand Winegrowers since 2014 and been involved with BRI since its inception. His work as general legal counsel included the original contracts to establish BRI, and ongoing advocacy and legal support for the wine research organization.

The California Department of Food and Agriculture announced in late May that the Lodi Winegrape Commission referendum passed with 85% of the region’s growers voting in favor of continuation. Established in 1991 as the grower-centric force behind the Lodi American Viticultural Area (AVA), the Commission represents 750 winegrowers farming more than 100,000 acres of winegrapes. It provides marketing, education, research and sustainable winegrowing programs funded via an annual assessment of gross value of the winegrape crop. Every five years, local growers vote to continue the organization and its programs. This year’s vote comes at the 30th anniversary of the organization. Congrats to the Lodi Winegrape Commission, an NGRA member-organization!

Following a survey of grape growers in the state, the New York Wine & Grape Foundation has begun to develop a statewide sustainable winegrowing certification program. The goal of the survey was to assess how many grape growers across the state practice sustainable vineyard management according to the VineBalance New York Guide to Sustainable Viticulture, co-developed by Cornell Cooperative Extension and the New York Department of Agriculture and Markets Soil and Water Conservation Committee. The Foundation also sought to understand the unique challenge sustainable grape-growing may pose there. Results showed that 94% of New York growers practice some aspect of sustainable vineyard management. The survey also revealed that the average vineyard in New York is 70 acres, but size varies dramatically. Plus, about half of the vineyards surveyed grow exclusively Vitis vinifera, but 44% of the reported acreage is planted with a mix of V. vinifera, V. Labrusca and hybrid grape varieties. These results highlight the need to create a program that includes vineyards ranging from one acre to hundreds of acres, growing a diversity of grape varieties not cultivated in other parts of the country. “Developing this program will ‘take a village,’” says Sustainability Manager Whitney Beaman, “and that is key to our approach.”

The Foundation has established a Sustainability Advisory Committee of growers and wineries from the Finger Lakes, and is now seeking representatives from Lake Erie, Long Island, Hudson River, Upper Hudson, Niagara Escarpment and Champlain Valley to join in. Submit committee nominations.

A new labeling law designed to guarantee the authenticity of Texas wine passed through the state legislature and was signed by the governor into law this month. The law has been six years in the making, with factions of the industry supporting the idea that all wines labeled “Texas” should be made from 100% Texas-grown grapes, and others believing the state’s winemakers may sometimes need flexibility to source grapes from outside the state. The new law represents a compromise:

Ohio’s Vineyard Expansion Assistance Program (VEAP) is funded by the Ohio Grape Industries Committee to encourage the establishment of new vineyards or expanding existing ones in the state, thereby providing a more stable source of high-quality, high-value grapes for Ohio’s wineries, farmers’ markets and retail outlets. Ohio grape growers may apply for up to $3,000 per acre with a maximum of three acres or $9,000 to cover the cost of grapevines planted. Learn more and apply.

Alexa McDaniel, a Horticulture doctoral candidate at Washington State University, has been awarded a Foundation for Food and Agriculture Research (FFAR) Fellowship, which will support her growth as a leader and professional, while enhancing her work to solve industry pest-related problems, like powdery mildew, and fostering her connection with industry stakeholders. The Washington Wine Commission, an NGRA member-organization, provided the industry matching contribution required for this professional development fellowship.

The USDA’s Agricultural Research Service is seeking to hire a Research Geneticist in the Crop Diseases, Pests and Genetics Research Unit at the San Joaquin Valley Agricultural Sciences Center in Parlier, CA. The project's mission is to advance grapevine (specifically, table grapes and raisins) and stone fruit production through interdisciplinary research, breeding and technology transfer. Deadline to apply is July 14, 2021. See the complete job description and apply.

The new Viticulture Data Journal is seeking an Editor-in-Chief. This open-access peer-reviewed journal launched in 2020 “offer(s) a publication venue for non-conventional but valuable outputs of the research cycle in viticultural research,” focusing on data, models, software, data analytics pipelines and visualization methods.

At the ASEV-NGRA Precision Viticulture Symposium, held virtually on June 21, 2021, two keynote presentations bookended the day. Rob Bramley, a Senior Principal Research Scientist at CSIRO (Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation) in Australia, opened the event with remarks on “Precision Viticulture and Beyond – Digital Approaches to Winegrowing.” (He noted that “Winegrowing, to me, is the culmination of grapegrowing and winemaking,” which has been his particular focus. “Hopefully, most of what I have to say will apply to the juice, table grapes and dried fruit sectors, as well.”) And Nick Dokoozlian, Vice President of Winegrowing Research at E. & J. Gallo Winery and NGRA’s Research Chair, closed the day with a keynote presentation entitled, “The Promise and Challenge of Precision Viticulture.”

Widely considered the father of precision viticulture, Rob set the stage for the sessions on pests and diseases, crop estimation and decision support systems, vine management and grower best practices that followed. The basic promise of precision agriculture, he said, stems from the premise that land is variable, and understanding that variability and its limitations to production is valuable. Precision ag works on a cyclical system of 1) observation about variability, 2) evaluation and interpretation and 3) targeted management. Or “measure, model, manage,” as Terry Bates of Cornell University outlined in his talk, “Leveraging Sensor Information for Variable Rate Vineyard Management.”

But as Rob and other speakers observed, the focus of precision viticulture today is on the development of technology (“solutions looking for problems,” as he described), and growers are reluctant to invest in or adopt things they don’t fully understand. As NASA Harvest’s Alyssa Whitcraft said in her talk, “Down to Earth Data for Decision Support: NASA Harvest(ing) 50 Years of Global Agricultural Monitoring Research to Support Producers,” “We need to build up our evidence base” for what works. Rob illustrated, through the example of Australia’s grain sector, that the adoption of precision viticulture is greatly aided by a killer app. For grains, it was yield mapping. For the grape and wine sector, “it might not be yield maps,” Rob said. Perhaps it’s “AI-enabled Sensing for Crop Estimation,” as Mason Earles (UC Davis) discussed, or sensing/predicting fruit composition, both current topics of exploration in NGRA’s Research Committees.  

Rob also introduced the idea of using precision viticulture on a regional level, to define and perhaps defend the distinctiveness of terroir. That idea of PV’s regional applications echoed through remarks on areawide efforts to control the spread of pests and diseases from Kent Daane (UC Berkeley), Chad Vargas (NewGen Vineyard Services) and Aaron Lange (LangeTwins Family Winery and Vineyards).

But the “main game” for precision viticulture in Australia, Rob said, has been on selective harvest and product streaming of fruit. And that’s where the opening and closing keynotes diverged.

Today, Nick said, we’re in the early stages with precision practices. “We’re at a point where we’re describing what happened” over the course of the growing season or what he calls “descriptive analytics.” That current state of the art is “at the low end of value,” delivering relatively little return, which speaks to the barriers to adoption and investment described above.

He believes that the promise of precision viticulture is “prescriptive analytics,” or managing or controlling what happens in the field. We need to progress from managing vineyards in hindsight to achieving foresight, or “real-time, on-the-go actuation,” moving “beyond what Mother Nature gave us…to drive to the desired quality tier or yield.” But we’re a long way away from that vision, he said.

Returning to the killer app concept as Rob described, Nick noted that yield mapping, particularly as it relates to vineyard variability, has been a primary driver of Gallo’s adoption of precision viticulture. And what’s driving vineyard variation is soil moisture. He described long-running research in conjunction with USDA-ARS Hydrology and Remote Sensing Lab and others to harness remote sensing and big data to enable variable rate precision irrigation. “There’s no question that remote sensing has become perhaps our most powerful tool in terms of increasing our ability to estimate the amount and apply water accurately.” But the differences in resolution of the various sensors, the “huge challenge” of occlusion in the fruit zone preventing sensors from collecting accurate images and the difficulty in manipulating the data hampers the ability to model vineyard information and drive toward action.

At the end of the day, the symposium illustrated Rob Bramley’s statement: “In a variable landscape (like vineyards), uniform management is a sub-optimal strategy.” Whether a precision viticulture program focuses on variable-rate inputs, as with irrigation, nutrition, sprays, etc., to minimize vineyard variability, reduce costs and improve quality and efficiency, or on outputs to enable selective harvest and product streaming, there’s opportunity in farming with precision. If you’re unsure what technologies you need or how to use it, the symposium agenda can serve as a roster of experts to ask. As Terry Bates, Aaron Lange and others noted, the important thing is to just get started.

Editor's Note: If you registered for the ASEV-NGRA Precision Viticulture Symposium, use your registration credentials (badge number and password) to view all the presentations now through July 16. Note that the live sessions held that afternoon are viewable as part of the entire afternoon recording. For example, the grower panel begins at the 1:41 mark and Nick’s talk starts at the 2:29 mark.

The USDA’s Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS) invites applications for fiscal year 2022 Plant Protection Act Section 7721 funding, including approximately $75 million for plant protection and at least $5 million going to the National Clean Plant Network (NCPN).

PPA 7721’s Plant Pest and Disease Management and Disaster Prevention Program is a cooperative agreement program established by the Farm Bill that allows APHIS and its partners to prevent, detect and mitigate invasive plant pests and diseases. Deadline to apply is July 23, 2021. See the six strategic goal areas and apply.

The National Clean Plant Network establishes a network of clean plant centers for diagnostic and pathogen elimination services to produce clean propagative plant material and maintain blocks of pathogen-tested plant material in sites throughout the U.S. The deadline to apply for NCPN funding is August 27, 2021. Learn more and apply.

America’s Seed Fund, powered by the National Science Foundation (NSF), seeks technical and commercial experts from all technology disciplines to review proposals from startups and small businesses for the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and STTR (Small Business Technology Transfer) programs. Your insights and expertise will help NSF program directors evaluate transformative technologies from the nation’s most promising entrepreneurs in their proposals to receive for up to $2 million in NSF funding. Learn more.

NIFA, in collaboration with its land-grant university partners, is building a new grants management and reporting system that integrates the Plan of Work (POW) and Research, Extension and Education Project Online Reporting Tool (REEport) applications into a unified system. The system rollout consists of three initial phases. In the first phase, starting last month, NIFA released the first version of the research initiation module of the new integrated system, NIFA Reporting System (NRS), for FY 2020 programs projects by Hatch and Evans-Allen Institutions. This release marks a significant milestone in bringing AREERA-funded research and extension together for the first time in a centralized reporting portal. NIFA will expand the system to include all capacity (formula) and competitive programs currently in REEport and POW after the initial phases.

Professionals in the PAG (Plant and Animal Genome) Conference community are invited to submit a workshop proposal for PAG XXIX to be held in person in San Diego, CA, January 8-12, 2022. The deadline for proposals is September 3, 2021.

June 23, 2021 | New Zealand Winegrower

New Zealand has a resource all its own for tackling vineyard issues. "Grapevine Diseases in New Zealand" is the first book dedicated to the country's grape disorders. It will become the primary textbook for teaching grapevine diseases at Lincoln University the Eastern Institute of Technology, and the Nelson Marlborough Institute of Technology.

June 22, 2021 | Western Farmer-Stockman

Researchers at Washington State University seek to disrupt mealybug mating (and thereby limit the spread of the leafroll disease the pests spread) by attaching twist-ties coated with synthetic sex pheromones to grapevines.

June 22, 2021 | National Science Foundation

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has launched its fourth testbed in its Platforms for Advanced Wireless Research (PAWR) with help from USDA-NIFA and 35 wireless companies. In addition to wireless technology, it includes services for precision agriculture for crop and livestock farms.

June 21, 2021 | American Vineyard Magazine

Meet Devin Rippner, the newest USDA-ARS scientist stationed at the WSU-IAREC. Naturally, Devin has "an active interest in pedology." Three guesses for what that's the study of?

June 17, 2021 | Michigan Farm News

Researchers at Michigan State University are testing early (rather than late) season leaf removal to help grapes ripen earlier and at lower temperatures during the state's short summer season.

June 15, 2021 | The New York Times

Many Covid survivors report symptoms of the little-known condition called parosmia that distorts smell and taste. Onions, garlic and meat taste putrid, fruits like soap, coffee smells like gasoline. How long does it last? Scientists don't know.

June 14, 2021 | Western Farm Press

A new publication from UC Agriculture & Natural Resources, "Burrowing Rodents: Developing a Management Plan for Organic Agriculture in California," helps growers manage pests like ground squirrels, pocket gophers and meadow voles (the three most common in California) using organically acceptable methods.

June 10, 2021 | Smart Company

Aussie agtech startup The Yield has partnered with Treasury Wine Estates and Yamaha Motor Co. on an R&D project aimed at improving yield prediction and autonomous spraying using sensors, analytics and robots. Trials begin in Australia later this year, and here on the West Coast early next year.

June 10, 2021 | The New York Times

Shipping wine around the world in glass bottles is one of the industry's largest carbon impacts. Companies like the Gotham Project offer examples of earth-friendly practices like shipping in flex-tanks and bottling at/near point of purchase, and selling wine in reusable bottles, with incentives to return/refill them.

June 9, 2021 | The Global Plant Council

Pandemics aren't just for human diseases. Plant pandemics are increasingly possible, due to climate change and its impact on insect behavior and weather patterns, and the globalization of the food trade. Plant disease surveillance, improved detection systems and global predictive disease modeling are needed to mitigate disease outbreaks, say a team of researchers in a new commentary published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Irrigation Improves Vine Physiology and Fruit Composition in Grapevine Red Blotch Virus-Infected Vitis vinifera L.

June 8, 2021 | American Journal of Enology and Viticulture

Research from Oregon State University suggests that maintaining high vine water status may mitigate some of the negative effects of grapevine red blotch virus on vine physiology and fruit composition.

June 8, 2021 | Colorado State University

New research from Colorado State University, published in Nature Communications, finds that soil microbes under oxygen-free conditions can break down polyphenols in soil, thereby releasing CO2, contrary to a long-held belief that they trap carbon.

June 7, 2021 | UC Davis

About 90% of the wine grapes crushed in the U.S. are mechanically harvested, yielding roughly 50% in labor savings. But there are now mechanical options for canopy management tasks like leaf removal, shoot thinning and trunk suckering. Using more mechanization in vineyards can further reduce labor costs and sometimes even improve grape quality. Kaan Kurtural and Matt Fidelibus, both of UC Davis, co-authored this comprehensive review.

June 3, 2021 | Science Daily

The new PoPS (Pest or Pathogen Spread) forecasting platform from North Carolina State University and USDA-APHIS can predict when and where pests and diseases will attack crops or forests, and test when to apply pesticides or other management strategies to contain them.

June 3, 2021 | Oregon State University

Research by the Oregon State University Southern Oregon Research & Extension Center's Alec Levin shows that the U.S. Bureau of Reclamation’s AgriMet network that growers use for irrigation scheduling gave 44% higher estimates for water than Southern Oregon vineyards need.

June 2021 | California Association of Winegrape Growers

The June issue of the California Association of Winegrape Growers' The Crush newsletter has a cover story on "Winegrape Varieties for a Changing Climate." It includes a reference to an NGRA-initiated project led by UC Agriculture & Natural Resources' Matt Fidelibus to create a database of variety trials!

May 31, 2021 | AgNet West

Plant cell membranes are impervious to CRISPR. But a discovery out of UC Davis paves the way for this new grape research from Oregon State University, funded by the CDFA Pierce's Disease/Glassy-winged Sharpshooter Board, to develop powdery mildew-resistant vines using the gene editing technology.

May 27, 2021 | Wine Business Monthly

New LiDAR-based smart guided sprayer control technology developed by USDA-ARS is being trialed by Trinchero Family Estates in Lodi vineyards. Field studies have shown it can reduce pesticide use by up to 73% and also reduce airborne spray drift and spray loss on the ground.

May 25, 2021 | Wine Business Monthly

Can enclosing clusters in activated carbon (AC) fabric or "hoods" during smoke events help? Early trials at the University of Adelaide showed AC hoods protected grapes from 97% of smoke taint.

May 20, 2021 | University of California

Scientists at UC Davis and UC Riverside have discovered genes that affect the development of three key characteristics of plant xylem and roots that can help them survive longer, more intense periods of drought. The study used tomato, rice and Arabidopsis as model systems, but “it’s likely these similarities hold true for other crops too,” the team says.

May 17, 2021 | Genetic Literacy Project

Regenerative agriculture is our generation's alternative to "industrial farming," aimed the "central challenge of our time," mitigating and maybe even reversing climate change through carbon sequestration. This four-part series from The Genetic Literacy Project explores the historical context, and the promise and challenges of regenerative agriculture.

May 2021 | Island Press

In her new book, "Getting to the Heart of Science Communication," Faith Kearns offers a succinct guide for navigating the human relationships critical to the success of practice-based science. Faith is on faculty at the California Institute for Water Resources, UC Agriculture & Natural Resources.

April 29, 2021 | Twitter

An infographic from the American Association of Wine Economists (AAWE) shows "the ups and downs of innovations" in winegrape varieties. "Grapevine breeding exhibits two major innovation waves, one in response to phylloxera, another in the 1960-70s. The number of new varieties has gone down since then," AAWE says. "Will we need another wave to tackle climate change? Or dig out old varieties?"

October 25, 2020 | Wiley Online Library

At the ASEV-NGRA Precision Viticulture Symposium on June 21, 2021, speaker Jaco Fourie of NZ's Lincoln Agritech described vine pruning as a practice so specialized that it's sometimes considered a point of differentiation. Thus, it's been difficult to mechanize. Here, he and fellow scientists propose a promising step toward an automated system that, using a novel neural network design, can learn pruning behavior from expert example.

Find these stories and more, published daily, on NGRA's Facebook and Twitter feeds.

July 7-8, 2021

Virtual event

July 14, 2021

Thomas Henick-Kling, Washington State University

July 26, 2021

Brian Bailey and Megan Bartlett, UC Davis

July 27, 2021

August 5, 2021

Charles Edwards, Washington State University

August 5-9, 2021

Denver, CO

August 10, 2021

Virtual event

October 31-November 5, 2021

Virtual event

Find all upcoming events on the NGRA website.