Drone mapping of vineyards, from the person vine to the vineyard.
by DRONELIFE Staff Author Ian J. McNabb
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While flying and alcohol don’t normally go together, latest open standards supporting further data integration on the earth of wine has the potential to modernize and streamline the operation of vineyards each within the UK and the world over. Defra’s Farming Innovation Programme and UKRI’s Transforming Food Production Challenge is supporting a brand new project: Vineyard Information System for Technology and Automation, or ‘VISTA’. This latest open standard will enable high-level digital maps of economic vineyards, supporting increased automation and precision of their agricultural operations.
Led by a consortium of industry partners spanning the world of UAVs and the world of wine, the project will start by mapping vineyards on the row and individual vine level, starting with JoJo’s Vineyard, an Oxfordshire-based winemaker. The team includes tech experts from Agri-EPI Centre, crop mapping specialists from Outfield Technologies, roboticists from Antobot, viticultural consultants from Vinescapes, and robotic mapping researchers from the University of Lincoln.
Drones, robots, and in-field sensors will probably be used to observe climate and weather, plant health, soil moisture, fruit counts and fruit quality, all integrated into the “backbone” of the VISTA map. Because the project continues, the information gathered will probably be used to drive precision spraying systems and to create more accurate yield maps for growers, two use-cases that were highlighted as especially promising. Because the technology continues to mature, the consortium is happy to integrate additional applications that will be driven by the VISTA system’s data access.
Eliot Dixon, Head of Engineering at Agri-EPI Centre, said, “The agricultural industry has a robust need for increased data integration to unlock the true potential of precision agriculture across all sectors. As an industry which is inherently focussed on infrastructure, the important thing to getting this integration right is having the ability to communicate in a language-focussed infrastructure. That is what VISTA is all about as a project, making a mapping standard for agriculture that permits robotics, drones, sensors and decision support tools to speak, integrate their data and supply maximum profit for farmers. Viticulture is just the beginning; we hope to see this basic principle getting used in other sectors.”
Ian Beecher-Jones, Co-owner of JoJo’s Vineyard, said, “JoJo’s Vineyard is delighted to be the lead vineyard within the VISTA project. We now have been developing precision viticultural technologies for the last couple of years and have a robust belief the project will proceed the work we now have achieved within the Innovate UK Viticulture 4.0 project, which highlighted the importance of creating a sturdy digital infrastructure on which all other technologies can work efficiently and effectively.”
More information on this project will be found here.
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