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European viticultural landscapes not only support a significant share of rural livelihoods and cultural traditions, but also conserve biodiversity and sustain various ecosystem services. Winegrowers' practices of inter-row management (including whether to have vegetation in the inter-rows, type of vegetation, duration of vegetation cover, and soil tillage) and pesticide use (including herbicides in the inter-rows, fungicides, insecticides, and pheromone dispensers as an alternative) can affect these services. This study aims to understand winegrowers' decision-making driven by their personal characteristics, attitudes and beliefs towards viticultural practices, physical properties of vineyards, and farm management characteristics in five European winegrowing regions. These include Palatinate in Germany, Leithaberg in Austria, Tarnave in Romania, Bordeaux in France, and Montilla-Moriles in Spain. Based on a questionnaire survey, we constructed decision trees for each behaviour per case study as well as in a generic European model. We found factors that best explain how winegrowers manage their inter-rows and use pesticides. Results showed that not only do behaviours of winegrowers vary drastically across the case studies, but also the factors that explain most behaviours: farmers' attitudes and beliefs and farm management characteristics. This implies the importance of attitudes and beliefs – which are under-researched as compared to other factors – in understanding farmers’ behaviour. With the driving factors found to vary per case study, our results also imply the need for locally-adapted policies. Furthermore, our results suggest that the effects of climate change on European viticultural landscapes concern not only shifting production regions and changes in yields, but also changing pressure of pests and diseases. Any long-term behavioural change requires efforts from many stakeholders.

This article outlines the major scientific objectives of the SHui project that seeks to optimize soil and water use in agricultural systems in the EU and China, by considering major current scientific challenges in this area. SHui (for Soil Hydrology research platform underpinning innovation to manage water scarcity in European and Chinese cropping systems) is large cooperative project that aims to provide significant advances through transdisciplinary research at multiple scales (plot, field, catchment and region). This paper explains our research platform of long-term experiments established at plot scale, approaches taken to integrate crop and hydrological models at field scale; coupled crop models and satellite-based observations at regional scales; decision support systems for specific farming situations; and the integration of these technologies to provide policy recommendations through socio-economic analysis of the impact of soil and water saving technologies. It also outlines the training of stakeholders to develop a basic common curriculum despite the subject being distributed across different disciplines and professions. As such, this article provides a review of major challenges for improving soil and water use in EU and China as well as information about the potential to access information made available by SHui, and to allow others to engage with the project.