Disp’eau

Precision monitoring of vine irrigation or vine training methods to optimize management of water resource and field selection

Crop modellingGrapevineIrrigation

Description

To remain competitive, Languedoc viticulture must adapt to the global market by producing wines that meet consumer expectations and ensuring consistent quality from one year to the next.This means effectively managing water stress, which is becoming increasingly difficult to do given current climate trends. It is also necessary to manage water resources at the scale of the terroirs and to set up appropriate supply networks because water is a limited resource.
The DISP’EAU project has made it possible to develop an innovative decision support tool to continuously quantify water stress at the plant level and correlate it to the potential quality of the final product using a mechanistic model of the soil-vine-atmosphere continuum. This model was paired with an expert system and a diagnostic chart to correlate the water stress of the vine with the quality of the grapes. R&D work is still underway to best respond to climatic conditions linked to global warming. This work improves the quality of model prediction under extreme water stress conditions. Experiments are underway with customers, but also within experimental study plots.


After the successful end of the Disp’Eau project, in 2012, itk began selling:

Progress

100

In production

Objectives

Develop an innovative decision support software application for optimizing irrigation management that will achieve:


Better management of water resources

Substantial water savings in irrigated areas

Optimal sizing of hydraulic irrigation systems

Field selection

Expected benefits

  • A 10% increase in the price paid to the grower, representing an estimated average gain of €7,700 per farm and €50 million across the Languedoc-Roussillon region
  • Maintaining regional jobs in the wine-growing sector
  • Creating more than 20 permanent jobs at partner companies
  • Estimated annual revenue for itk of €750 K in France and €3.4 M abroad through sales of the app
  • 20 to 30% water savings in irrigated areas by using the app, representing a savings of 15M m3 of water, equivalent to the annual consumption of a city like Montpellier

Partners


  • Geocarta
  • INRAE

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