Approaches to Grape Growing Flashcards
What are the 6 main approaches to grape growing?
- Conventional viticulture (CV)
- Sustainable viticulture (SV)
- Organic viticulture (OV)
- Biodynamic viticulture (BV)
- Regenerative viticulture (RV)
- Precision viticulture (PV)
What is monoculture?>
What practices are used?
○ Monoculture - cultivation of a single crop in a given area
○ Late 20th cent - production focused on efficiency and reducing labor costs
○ Achieved by mech, chemical inputs, irrigation and clonal selection
○ Monoculture vineyards kept weed free via increased use of herbicides and mineral fertilizers; agro-chemicals for pests/diseases; mineral fertilizers
What are the advantages/disadvantages of conventional viticulture?
Advantages
* ability to mechanize
* reduced competition from other plants
* ability to tend to specific needs of grape var -> able to inc yields and min costs
Disadvantages
* Monoculture plants more susceptible to disease and pests and spreads more quickly since all plants the same -> need more treatment,
* Nutrients depleted without ecosystem to naturally replace -> more fertilizer,
* residual chems can get into groundwater
* chems expensive
What are the 3 goals of sustainable viticulture?
What is the primary focus and what are the specific goals for that?
Overall goals - social, economic, environmental?
Primary focus - environmental
Key goals:
○ Promote natural ecosystems and biodiversity in vineyard
○ Manage waste and minimize use of chemicals and energy use
○ Reduce impact of viti on broader environ
How do growers approach sustainable viticulture and what is the benefit?
○ Be proactive predicting/preventing disease/pests before they occur by having in-depth understanding of lifecycles of vine and vineyard pests and monitoring weather patterns
○ -> allows application of spraying at the times when needed/impactful vs on a schedule
=LESS SPRAYING
What is integrated pest management (IPM)?
How is it applied?
What are the benefits?
aka - lutte raisonèe
○ Built on some aspects of organic viti, but allows use of chemical interventions when needed
○ Set thresholds for when to take action, monitor pests, set up preventative measures and eval control methods (if prevent actions don’t work)
○ Grower only intervenes if issues are reaching set economic thresholds
○ Anticipate issues, build vines natural defenses and act at most impactful time
What are benefits and disadvantages of sustainable viticulture?
Advantages
* Use of science to understand and manage threats, minimize amt of intervention needed
* Reduction of spraying
* Lower cost
Disadvantages
* The term SV not officially defined and protected - can be falsely used
* Danger that national SV standards set too low
What is overall goal of Organic Viticulture (OV)?
Improve health and disease resistance of vines by improving health of soil of vineyard
* accomplished via naturally encouraging microbes and animals in the ecosystem; rejects use of synthetic ferts, fungicides, herbicides and pesticides.
What are the key features - and benefits of each - of Organic Viticulture?
○ Use of compost - breaks down in soil, provides slow release of nutrients -> improves soil structure and increases biomass (total qty/weight of organisms in given area)
○ Natural fertilizers - restore natural balance of vineyard using animal dung, natural calcium carbonate
○ Cover crops - prevent soil erosion and improve life of soil. Done by ->
- ”Green manure” - plowing in existing organic matter
- Improve biodiversity
○ Reduction of monoculture by growing cover crops, planting hedges and creating islands of biodiversity
What is thinking on spraying - use of traditional vs synthetic - in OV?
What other approaches are used to address pests/rot in OV?
Spraying
* Many use traditional sprays - copper sulfate for mildew - and monitor weather to det when to spray;
- Can have build up of heavy metal in soil when frequent spraying necessary
* Now others feel limited use of synthetic better - longer lasting = less spraying and less use of tractors
Also use natural predators and natural ecosystem mechanisms
- to combat Botrytis - use bacteria (bacillus subtillis) that competes for space on the grapes
- use pheromones that cause sexual confusion to disrupt insect mating to limit their populations
How does OV certification work, what is the universal requirement?
○ Many OV cert bodies around the world, standards similar but different -> some wines made under stricter rules than others
○ All int’l cert board should meet standards of IFOAM - International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements
○ Universal requirement - must undergo period of conversion to organic before certification
What are advantages/disadvantages of OV?
Advantages
* Improvement in health and disease-resistance of vines
* Improvement in soil health
* Elim use of synthetic sprays
* Save money on cost of spraying
Disadvantages
* Possible small reduction in yields
* Pot signif reduction in yields in difficult (rainy, high humidity) years
* Increased reliance on copper sprays, which can cause build-up
* Increased cost - certification cost, some labor cost - esp in cold/wet areas
What are stats on use of OV?
○ 2017 - 5.4% of vineyards certified OV
○ Europe acts for 84% of OV in world; Italy highest at 15.8%
○ NZ - 4.3%; USA 2.7%
○ Largest markets for organic still wine = Germany, France, UK, USA, Sweden, Japan
Who are parents of biodynamic viticulture (BV)?
Rudolph Steiner and Maria Thun
What is biodynamic viticulture and what are some examples?
○ Regards the farm as an organism, seeking balance between physical and higher, non-physical realms - vineyard soil seen as part of connected system with Earth, other plants, and the air
○ Includes all OV practices, and adds cosmology and philosophy
○ BV growers adapt practices to cycles of planets, moon and stars; example:
- Ascending moon = summer mood = sap rising -> time to take cuttings for grafting, avoid pruning
- Descending moon = winter mood = roots favored -> best time to plant and/or prune
What are preparations, what are 2 buckets and and what are the specific ones and what are their benefits?
preparations are homeopathic remedies used to fertilize, treat disease and prevent pests
2 buckets - farm sprays and compost preparations
Sprays:
Prep 500 - horn manure
* Stuff cow manure into horn and bury in soil over winter
* Dug up and contents are “dynamized” - stir into water and mix both ways so water “memorizes power of preparation” - then passed onto vineyard by spraying -> believed to catalyze humus formation
Prep 501 - horn silica
* Fill horn with ground quartz and bury for 6 mos; dug up, dynamized, sprayed - believed to encourage plant growth
Prep 508 - horsetail
* Horsetail plant (has lots of silica); combined with sulfur and dynamized with water - very effective vs fungal disease
Compost preparations:
Preps 502-507 - horn compost
* belief that compost needs to be activated by using natural starters in small qty -> believed to help decompose compost
* includes things like chamomile, nettle, oak bark, dandelion etc
What is approach to spraying with BV?
○ Use traditional chems - sulfur and copper
○ Ashing - spread ashes of burnt weeds or harmful animals to ward off hazards
How does BV certification work?
○ Most common body - Demeter - sets int’l farming standards
○ OV certification is baseline
○ Each national association adjusts/interprets additional guidelines
What is regenerative viticulture and how does it differ from SV and OV?
○ Aims to continually improve upon environ/social/economic conditions by improving water and soil vs just maintaining them as in SV/OV
Where had BV been adopted?
What are the adv/disadv?
○ Mostly smaller growers and estates; esp popular in Loire
○ Adv and disadvantages same as OV, may have a little additional cost - mostly in labor
What are the key elements of regenerative viticulture?
○ Restore vineyard to functioning agro-ecosystem to improve resources and limit inputs
○ Soil health - improve soil health improve overall vineyard health
○ Biodiversity above and below ground
○ Improved grower welfare -> reduced costs from synthetic inputs and limiting exposure to chemicals
What is CORE tenet of RV?
Soil health
○ Organisms, water and other material in soil have evolved naturally beneficial relationships that improve water, vegetation and site quality
○ Natural interconnected relationships and biodiversity = healthier ecosystem more resistant to climate change threats (heat/drought)
What are common viticultural practices used in RV?
○ Limiting tilling and irrigation -> hgelps sequester carbon in soil vs release into air
○ Adding compost - inc organic matter and inc nutrients
○ Cover crops - prevent erosion, reduce water loss
○ Add natural animals - natural control for pests
What are the adv/disadv of RV?
Advantages
○ Soil health improved
○ Carbon sequestered
○ Vineyards more resilient, limit impact of climate change
○ Biodiversity improved
○ Lives of growers improved - fewer chems, lower costs
Disadvantages
○ Not legally defined
○ Growers need to experiment - time consuming, costly
○ Results take time to see benefits
○ Fewer inputs used -> less control over disease/climate change
○ Certs cost money
What is the goal of precision viticulture? How is it implemented? Example?
○ Goal - all key interventions carried out precisely to produce best quality and yield -> reduce environ impact and costs where possible
○ Uses vineyard data - soil, vine vigor, topography, plant growth - to respond to changes from plot to plot/row to row; Data collected by sensors on aircraft or tractor and GPS used to plot on maps
○ Variable rate intervention technology - Interventions in vineyard targeted based on differences across small areas based on data
○ Example - change rootstock halfway along row as soil gets more fertile
What are the adv/disadv of PV?
Advantages
○ Detailed understanding of variations in vineyard that impact yield and quality between and w/in sites
○ Ability to tailor wide range of interventions very surgically
Disadvantages
○ Cost of sensors, software and consulting/staff
○ Cost of initial data collection - usually only large scale growers can afford
