Issue link: https://read.dmtmag.com/i/769560
www.goodfruit.com Good Fruit Grower JANUARY 15, 2017 37 F or the most part, grape growers treat their vineyard blocks as units, harvesting all the grapes at the same time, applying an even amount of nutrients and using the same level of pest protection. In ways, they treat all the vines the same. Terry Bates, director of the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Center, believes he has a better idea. "What do you do when things are different in one end of the vineyard than the other end of the vineyard?" he asked growers during the Ravenholt Lecture at the Washington State University Wine Science Center in Richland, Washington. Funded by a Specialty Crop Research Initiative Grant, Bates and his team aim to develop a system of automated sensors and GPS to create informative vineyard maps that a manager could use to tailor decisions about nutrients, pest manage - ment, irrigation and harvest to specific areas in the vineyard. He calls it "variable vineyard management." "Either the goal is to make (the vine- yard) more uniform or to embrace that it is not uniform and be able to do something like differential harvest, take advantage of that lack of uniformity to get the product that we want," Bates said at the lecture in November. The team received the two-year, $2.4 million grant after applying for a fifth time in 2015. However, the work started in 2014 with a pilot project funded by a National Grape and Wine Initiative grant. "Prescription map" The goal is "a prescription map," a map of a vineyard that color-codes different spots based on information "Either the goal is to make (the vineyard) more uniform or to embrace that it is not uniform and be able to do something like differential harvest, take advantage of that lack of uniformity to get the product that we want." —Terry Bates Research team aims to develop 'prescription map' for vineyards. by Ross Courtney Consider for your next planting: • BRUCE PONDER • SUSAN WILKINSON • ADAM WEIL • DAVE WEIL 503-538-2131 • FAX: 503-538-7616 info@treeconnect.com www.treeconnect.com BENEFITS: • Disease tolerant • Cold hardy • Adapts well to all cherry-growing districts • Forms flower buds and comes into bearing quicker than Mazzard with a better distribution of flower buds Dwarfing Cherry Rootstock Krymsk ® 5 Krymsk ® 6 [cv. VSL-2, USPP 15,723] [cv. LC-52, USPP 16,114] "Krymsk ® 5 and Krymsk ® 6 cherry rootstocks have proven to be the best rootstock for our orchards. They are yield efficient, grow and adapt well, and are cold hardy." —John Morton The Dalles, Oregon 2017 ROOTS AVAILABLE NOW Call Tree Connection: 800-421-4001