Coupling stem water potential and soil water potential on irrigated and not irrigated vines: preliminary results for Vitis vinifera L. cv Teroldego

Improving wine quality necessitates precise control over plant water stress, which requires accurate scheduling of irrigation based on the plant's water status and the soil's water availability. The aim of this experiment is to monitor the water status of grapevines and soil in both irrigated and not-irrigated conditions to quantify differences in the plant's physiological response and yield. In addition, novel microtensiometer probes for measuring continuously the Stem Water Potential were tested for efficacy. These probes were coupled with a handcrafted tensiometer to monitor the Soil Water status and at the end of the season all the yield was analyzed to determine the main oenological parameters driving the final quality of the musts. Initial findings indicate that the microtensiometers gave effective estimates of the vines’ water status, revealing rapid plant responses to water inputs and atmospheric changes. Notably for the experiment, soil moisture exceeded field capacity under irrigated vines before irrigation, suggesting potential water loss through deep percolation, and both the irrigated and not-irrigated vines were in water comfort for all the vegetative season without any detriment both in production and quality

IRRITRE: tools and infrastructures for irrigation in Trentino (IT)

Sustainable water management in agriculture and the maintenance of current crop quantity and quality standards are pivotal elements of agricultural policy at global and local levels. One pressing issue is the concurrent use of water resources for irrigation alongside hydropower, tourism, industrial, and civil purposes. This issue is becoming increasingly urgent in the Alps due to changes in winter precipitation patterns, which affect summer water supplies. To monitor the water consumption for irrigation at provincial level, the Autonomous Province of Trento has established and leads the IRRITRE project in collaboration with Fondazione Bruno Kessler, Fondazione Edmund Mach, and Trentino Digitale S.p.A. for the technological aspects. The initiative was launched in the Summer of 2023 and aims to provide the public administrators with real-time monitoring tools to track agricultural water usage. Additionally, it will equip Irrigation Consortia with an irrigation advisory system to optimize water consumption and irrigation automation at hydraulic valve le-level by using Artificial Intelligence. The project incorporates the creation of the digital infrastructure and the deployment of humidity probes in the soil. Currently, IRRITRE is being piloted in three significant agricultural areas of the Trentino region—cultivated with grapevines, apples, and olives—with plans to expand to other irrigation consortia

Un modello per la previsione della distribuzione spaziale dell'infestazione da Phyllocnistis vitegenella nei vigneti trentini

Phyllocnistis vitegenella Clemens is a grape leafminer observed for the first time in Italy in the Veneto (1995) and whose presence has been observed since 2004 in Trentino. This species overwinters as an adult on tree species and re-colonize the vineyard in spring, with a diffusion gradient from the overwintering sites. This study aimed at validating a model for predicting the spatial distribution of leafminer through surveys of the damage in the field. Through this approach we estimated a possible distribution area suitable to perform an insecticide treatment when the hypothetical damage threshold was exceeded in order to reduce the environmental and economic impact. Although data on the population dynamics of the leafminer should be further investigated, it was possible to propose, calibrate and validate a model of spatial distribution of damage. New crucial issues arose from the analysis of the data. For example, the role of some tree species on the interface between the vineyards and the woodland must be investigated for the parameterizations of the boundary conditions in the model. A new experiment addressing these issue is currently being carried in the monitoring site

Idroclima: a climatologic mapping of soil water content for Trentino

Project IdroClima (co-funded by the Climate change Fund of the Autonomous province of Trento) had the aim of studying the high-resolution (500 m) water content of Trentino soils. The water budget model GEOtop was applied to a 23-year period (1990-2012), corresponding to the hourly coverage of meteorological data. GEOtop accepts a thorough meteorological input, including several atmospheric variables. Pedology was described with a uniform soil, with 7 layers, owing to the lack of gridded information. Soil use has been input according to the CORINE Land Cover classes. A qualitative validation of the model was done with pre-existent probe measurements (2006-2008). The possible processing of results are multiple: the main results are analyzed and discussed in this wor

Use of multi-annual modis land surface temperature data for the characterization of the heat requirements for grapevine varieties

Heat requirements for grapevine varieties have been widely used to characterize potential growing regions for viticulture. One of the most important indices is the Winkler Index (WI) defined as the total summation of daily average air temperature above 10 °C from 1st of April to 31th of October in the Northern hemisphere. Mapping of the WI is commonly based on temperature data from meteorological stations. However, in complex terrain such as the European Alps, these are usually irregularly and sparsely distributed or unavailable. This renders traditional geospatial interpolation approaches difficult to become reliable. As an alternative, thermal remote sensing data, which are intrinsically spatialised, can be used. The aim of this work was to provide time series of Winkler Index maps from 2003 to 2010, by means of the MODIS Land Surface Temperature (LST) data and to validate the maps using ground truth data, collected by two weather station networks

High-resolution hail monitoring in an alpine fruit-growing region

The hail monitoring network in Trentino has been uninterruptedly run since 1974. It consists of 271 impactometric measurement sites, arranged according to a regular grid having a 2-km side. The survey allows an estimation of the kinetic energy of the hailstorm. A well known correlation exists between the electric activity of thunderstorm cells and the amount of hail fallen during hail-bearing events. In this study two aspects are considered: i) the relationship between ground lightning measures and hail indices; ii) some spatial and altitudinal features of hail climatology. Hail data were annually aggregated (in one season, from May to September). The correlation of hail indices with elevation is clear, yet it cannot explain by itself the inhomogeneous distribution in some areas, where local features significantly affect hail occurrence. Also the statistical link between annual hail values and the total measured number of lightning strokes is good; for some it is highly significant (p<0.01) after the removal of respective time trends. This allows to candidate the use of the number of lightning strokes over a season as a good indicator of hail fallen in the same season

" Alla ricerca del capitale paesaggistico! "

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