Drones at JoJo’s vineyard, Russell’s Water Oxfordshire
UAVs have long been discussed as a way to survey vineyards for vine health and apply directed nutrition or phytosanitary interventions. Great in theory but impractical? A few days ago Corbeau saw a demonstration of the new DJI AGRAS T50 at JoJo’s vineyard just outside Henley-upon-Thames in the UK.
We gave it a Shape file based on vine chlorophyll levels from a Leafbox and it took off and delivered targeted spray (just water for the demo) to the chosen rows. Interesting. Maybe the technology is starting to arrive at last.
It was a golden October morning when Ian Beecher Jones welcomed Steve Frost, Stephen Knell, Zara McGregor and Corbeau to JoJo’s vineyard. Autumn sun was very welcome after the dismal summer the UK endured!
Steve Frost’s new DJI AGRAS T50 drone has a 40 litre spray capacity and can sustain flights of around 7 minutes. Ian filled the drone reservoir with water for the demonstration while Steve loaded the shapefile into the drone controller.
Earlier in the season, regular Leafbox measurements had indicated a drop in chlorophyll and carotenoid pigment levels in seyval blanc and bacchus vines after flowering and fruit setting. This is also observed in plants like strawberries that work hard to produce heavy crops. At the time the area was too big to consider using a knapsack spray for nutrition therefore a conventional nutrition and phytosanitary spray was applied from a tractor across the whole vineyard.
What if it was possible to just treat the vines in a more directed way?
With the payload onboard and after Steve had plugged in the battery packs, we were about to find out. First up were Stephen’s M300 and Zara’s Mini 4 Pro drones to record the progress of the T50 from the air, swiftly followed by the T50. Steve had programmed the T50 controller to follow a GPS path matching the vine rows within the shapefile supplied by Corbeau. After just a few minutes the spray program was completed and we set out to inspect the leaves of the vines.
As the video clip reveals, the directed drone spraying was successful. While the upper leaves of the vine canopy in the seyval blanc and bacchus parcels were wet with water droplets, the adjacent rows were dry.
Next season it will be fascinating to show a real proof of principle of how directed spraying could improve vine health and vigour, reduce chemical consumption and environmental impact.
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