Building vineyard resilience through improved floor management practices

Abstract

Cover crops and their management are important to the function of a vineyard. They serve many roles including soil protection, habitat for beneficial insects, biological nitrogen fixation, enabling machinery access and regulation of soil moisture availability.

Summary

The vineyard mid-row accounts for approximately 60% of the floor area. While this zone of the vineyard is generally not income generating, it performs critical ecosystem services that impact on the overall performance of the vines and resultant fruit quality. Best management practice of the mid-row is determined by factors such as rainfall, desired yield and quality, soil type, organic/biodynamic or conventional systems and endemic vegetation.

This project aimed to provide growers, students and service providers with information on the contributions that cover crops make to overall vineyard management via web based media. Coupled with this web based information is a decision support tool designed to assist in determining the most appropriate cover crop for particular environments. Both delivery mechanisms are user friendly, with links to further information should it be required.

The information utilized was distilled from books, web sources and the scientific literature. Much of the information was irrelevant to the Australian viticultural industry. For example, cover crops are regularly used for reducing vine vigour in California, but in most cases in Australia their water use has to be minimal to prevent competition with the vines. From this information, a series of fact sheets were produced on the impacts of cover crops on frost, biodiversity, weed suppression, nematode populations, vine nutrition, native ground covers and seeding guidelines. As background information to these, an Innovators Network power point presentation and supporting information was produced. In addition, a web based decision support tool was developed in conjunction with Arris Pty. Ltd. This enables users to select from three options (rainfall, crop type (perennial / annual) and intended use) and the tool will deliver the species best suited to those criteria along with supporting information.