On 15^th December 2020, VISCA Final Conference was held virtually to present the results of the project and the way forward. The conference attracted around 60 participants with a variety of profiles: viticulturists, wine producers, scientists, agricultural communities, software providers, entrepreneurs, media, among others who connected to the e-conference from 10 countries: Belgium, France, Greece, Italy, Israel, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Tunisia and the UK.

The e-conference started with a welcoming statement from the project coordinator (METEOSIM) by Josep Sole Maria and the CEO of METEOSIM Oriol de Tera who opened the floor to the two guest speakers from the European Commission: Sasa Zavadlav (VISCA project Officer) and Marjan Van Meerloo, Directorate General for Research & Innovation. They both presented 'R&I contribution to the Green Deal objectives: Climate Action'.

After that, a session on VISCA presentation and results was organized. A short presentation of VISCA was made by the project Coordinator Josep Maria Solé. Then, Claudio Rossi from LINKS  Foundation made a short live demo of the VISCA Decision Support System (DSS) & its added value. The DSS is a Progressive Web Application which integrates climate and agricultural models with farmers’ management specifications to design short practices, medium- and long-term adaptation strategies to climate change. The live demo showed the integrated dashboard of the DSS with its 3 main widgets (phenology, sugar accumulation, irrigation and weather forecasts) as well as the features in relation to the map-based visualization. Later, the key results of the validation of the DSS and the climate services as well as the outcomes from the agronomic techniques: crop forcing and shoot trimming were illustrated by Omar Garcia from IRTA. VISCA solutions were demonstrated in 3 sites in Italy, Portugal and Spain . An interactive round table with end-users representing Codorniu (Xavier Bordes), Symington (Fernando Alves) and Mastroberardino (Antonio Dente) was part of this session where they shared their feedback from the implementation of VISCA solutions.

VISCA DSS is integrating climate and agricultural models with farmers’ management specifications in order to design short practices, medium- and long-term adaptation strategies to climate change.

The irrigation widget included in VISCA DSS provides recommendations for weekly irrigation needs based on plant and end-user requirements. This component of the tool has supported the irrigation management across the demonstration sites in Italy, Portugal and Spain. The irrigation model takes into account the plant physiological characteristics, the end-users’ necessities, and the irrigation and weather data during the growing season, to provide accurate irrigation volume forecasts for the next week. The model uses the midterm (weekly) weather predictions which is also included in VISCA DSS.

Figure1. Example of irrigation applied by the end user (purple line and bars) and predicted by the DSS (green line and bars) on an irrigation block at CODORNIU (Spain)

The irrigation widget in VISCA DSS allows the end-users to have an easy access to the irrigation data. The irrigation widget is divided into three panels (Figure 1). The left hand panel has an interactive map which shows the irrigation block selected in the parcel. The central panel presents the accumulated irrigation predicted (green line) and applied by the end user (purple line) and the right hand panel presents the weekly irrigation applied (purple bar) and forecasted by the VISCA irrigation model (green line).

What would happened if this forecast is not available (Business as Usual scenario)?

Crop forcing is based on moving the grape-ripening period from hot summer months to a cooler month later in the growing season. This is achieved by making an additional pruning, stopping the natural cycle of the plant and “forcing” it to restart its phenology (bud break, bloom, fruit set and so on). Shifting the ripening to a cooler month couples sugar accumulation with flavour and aroma development improving the quality of the grapes

This June, crop forcing has been successfully applied in our Spanish Demo site in Raimat in order to move the grape-ripening to October. According to VISCA DSS, performing the crop forcing at the beginning of June will move veraison from the last week of July to the mid October. In our Mediterranean climate, summers are characterized by hot and dry weather conditions, with temperature values that can be as high as 40 ºC. In Autumn, the temperature drops. The cooler weather conditions allow an optimum balance between sugar and flavor in the berry.  

The VISCA DSS tool is presenting this phenological cycles of the vineyards and taking into consideration the applied agronomic technique which is fed by the end-users:

VISCA DSS shows the phenology stage before crop forcing 

VISCA DSS shows the phenology stage after crop forcing 

What would happened if this forecast is not available (Business as Usual scenario)?

Without a tool like VISCA DSS, we cannot explore the optimum pruning date to implement the crop forcing. Having a seasonal forecast linked to phenological models provide a useful guideline to decide the optimum date to perform the crop forcing.