Managing soil and water to target quality and reduce environmental impact

Abstract

There are many soil, climate and management factors that interact to determine vineyard yield and fruit composition. Traditional research has employed designed experiments to investigate the effects of a single factor on vine performance.

Summary

A comprehensive data set was compiled from measurements of soil properties, climate, management inputs and vine performance in 5 commercial vineyards across different climatic regions of Australia. Multivariate, spatial and temporal statistical techniques were applied to the data to (1) describe the variation in soil properties, vine performance and irrigation inputs; (2) explore the interaction of factors impacting on yield and quality of fruit and wine; (3) investigate resource use efficiency; and (4) determine the drivers of vine water use.

There was substantial variation in fruit and wine composition, yield and its components, vine size, soil physical and chemical properties and vine nutrition. The variation tended to be stable from year-to-year. Such variation is typical of vineyards and leads to inefficient resource use. There is opportunity to use this unique data set to highlight the extent of variation in resource use efficiency in vineyards (e.g. 10-fold difference in water use efficiency) and suggest new innovative approaches to overcome these inefficiencies.