ASHS 2024 Conference

With the water regulations getting stricter in California and the climatic conditions getting warmer and drier during grape growing seasons, grape growers are forced to improve irrigation efficiency and eventually conserve water usage. This study was designed to incorporate soil moisture sensors and local above-ground weather stations to estimate grapevine water status with the goal to potentially replace pressure chamber measurement, which is the most popular plant-based method of measuring grapevine water status but labor-intensive and time-consuming. The study was conducted in a Barbera vineyard in Fresno, CA and there were four different regimes used in this study, including 50%, 75%, 100% crop evapotranspiration (ETc) replacement, and an over-irrigated condition (>150% ETc). Three Sony’s soil moisture sensors were installed at 20cm, 37.5 cm, and 75 cm in the soil paired with four time-domain reflectometry (TDR) sensors at 20cm, 37.5cm, 75cm, and 150cm in the soil to continuously monitor additional soil conditions besides soil moisture content. The above-ground weather conditions were collected from a nearby California Irrigation Management Information System (CIMIS) station (