Making sense of the vineyard environment

. There is a plethora of information about how to manage grapevines. Extension outputs usually provide general strategies applicable to a grape-growing region. Individual growers need to make sense of this information for their particular vineyard characteristics and conditions, with decision-making based on each grower’s accumulated experience and knowledge. What if this local accumulated experience and knowledge could be complemented with sensed and measured vineyard-specific information? What if it were then possible to link vineyard conditions directly to the Internet to get real-time situation awareness for each vineyard? This would enhance each grower’s specific decision-making. While such information can be obtained from on-site weather stations and other forms of environmental monitoring, these solutions are limited because they are purpose built – measuring one thing. With an increasing number of such systems coming on-line, it becomes difficult to integrate information sources into an easy-to-interpret decision support system. Additionally, multiple systems increase the time and resourcing to individually support and maintain. The Sense-T Program (www.sense-t.org.au) is building core infrastructure to facilitate integration of environmental sensor data. This infrastructure will enable interoperability and allow data to be re-used and/or re-purposed for different applications. The infrastructure will ensure that sensor data are properly described so that it can be used with confidence in different analytical tools/ systems. Sensor networks are being established in four Tasmanian vineyards to help build and demonstrate the Sense-T infrastructure and to facilitate development of new applications and regional R&D. The first applications will provide tailored alerts for botrytis and frost risk.