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The ability to detect and respond to vineyard spatial variation can lead to improved management—a practice known as precision viticulture. The goal of this study was to determine if remote sensors can enhance precision viticulture applications by detecting vineyard spatial variation. The hypothesis was that differences in vine spectral reflectance, as detected by remote sensors, would be associated with variations in viticultural variables due to known relationships with vine size, structure, and pigmentation. Riesling grapevines were geolocated within six commercial vineyards across Niagara, Ontario. Water status, vine size, winter hardiness, virus titer, yield components, and berry composition were measured on these vines. Remote sensing technologies subsequently collected multispectral data by unmanned aerial vehicles and by proximal sensing technology (GreenSeeker™), which were transformed into the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI). Direct relationships between NDVI and vine size, water status, yield, berry weight, and titratable acidity were observed, as well as inverse relationships between NDVI and Brix and potentially volatile terpenes. Remote sensing demonstrated the ability to detect vineyard areas differing in measures of vine health, yield, and berry composition in certain sites and years; however, more research is needed to determine when these technologies should be used for precision viticulture applications.

Individual vineyards can vary spatially for several viticultural attributes, including water stress, nutrient status, growth/vigour and disease—which can, in turn, impact berry composition and resulting wine products. The goal of this study was to determine if vineyard variability detected by remote sensing using an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) could be used to zonally harvest vineyard blocks and produce wines that are sensorially differentiable. The specific hypothesis was that remote sensing would detect vineyard variation in viticultural variables and associate this variation with differences in wine sensory attributes based upon zonal harvesting. In six commercial Riesling vineyards across the Niagara Peninsula in Ontario, Canada, a UAV collected multispectral data, which were used to calculate the normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI). Grapevines (≈ 80) in a grid pattern were geo-located within each block and vineyard UAV NDVI maps were used for zonal harvesting of geo-located vines in areas corresponding to high vs. low NDVI. Wines made from these zones were then compared chemically and sensorially. Overall, wines created from high vs. low NDVI zones differed inconsistently in their basic wine composition. Sensorially, for certain sites and vintages, panellists distinguished between wines made from high vs. low NDVI zones using a sorting task. UAV NDVI demonstrated the ability to determine areas within a vineyard block that could produce wines that were sensorially distinguishable from one another.