AdVini irrigates its vines to within a drop of water

rainees at AdVini's irrigated vineyards in Languedoc, Roussillon and Provence will be less and less required to get up by night to measure the water status of vineyards thanks to the pressure chamber purchased in 2018. “We have been working for two years with SensDigital, a company specialising in artificial intelligence, to hone the water requirements of our vineyard blocks”, says Carmen Etcheverry, head of sustainability at AdVini. Fixed data, such as grape varieties, rootstocks, row orientation, inclines, soil types and agro-ecological infrastructure, combined with the history of pressure chamber measurements and data collected in real time by a network of watermark and weather stations, have enabled SensDigital to develop a very accurate irrigation control algorithm.

The system has been operational since the 2021 vintage. The viticulturist now receives alerts on her smartphone when the drip valves need to be opened or closed. “We have defined several thresholds depending on the phenological stage of the vines and our product objectives, as water requirements vary according to the type of wine we are producing”, says Etcheverry. Manual measurements have been carried out to check the accuracy of the algorithm, which will continue to improve over time. For the time being, the technical staff prefers to retain manual control, but it may eventually let the system trigger itself.