VISCA Announces Potential Spring Frost in Raimat: Vineyards Ready to Fight Negative Impacts!
- Written by Maha Al-Salehi
VISCA DSS is integrating climate and agricultural models with farmers’ management specifications in order to design short practices, medium- and long-term adaptation strategies to climate change.
This April, VISCA DSS is predicting lower temperature events in Costers del Segre in the southwest slope of Raimat hills, where our Spanish demonstration site is located. This fall in temperature would lead to Spring Frost event causing some loss of shoots after budbreak. To avoid this loss, the activation of frost protection protocols was set on, a week in advance, on 26th March 2020. This information was obtained via the weather information widget of the DSS, and precisely the short & mid-term forecasts.
In order to reduce this effect, preventive irrigation was applied to the vineyards in this site.
What would happened if this forecast is not available (Business as Usual scenario)?
There would be no frost protection as well as postpone pruning in young vineyards or in sensible sites.
Which impacts are expected taken into consideration the predictions of VISCA DSS?
Higher yield and cost savings!
Several parameters are taken into consideration by VISCA tool besides the phenology cycle, irrigation needs and weather information. These parameters and targets include: Sugar content, Acidity (Ph), Yield (m3), Labour cost (manpower, products, equipment, etc) and Diseases impact.
Follow up with our monthly stories and predictions of VISCA DSS! We will make one story per month focusing on one climate event foreseen on our demo site(s).
