Satellite images can give a fascinating snapshot of the distribution of vegetative crops. Multispectral images from the European Space Agency Sentinel-2 satellite were used by Corbeau to create the vegetation index map of Llanerch Vineyard in South Wales shown above. The red areas overlaid on buildings have no vegetation, the yellow areas correspond to roads and the green fields show more or less plant leaf growth.

Within the vineyard, in the centre of the picture, vertical bands of darker green can be seen which correspond to more vigorous vines. Such images are useful because they provide a semi-quantitative measurement of vine vigour but they don’t have the resolution to pick out poor individual vines that may be diseased or smaller areas of vines that may be malnourished. The other shortcoming in Sentinel-2 data is that the pair of satellites return to the same spot on the earth (or tile) every 10 days. At best, new vineyard images can be recorded every 5 days. In practice the interval is longer due to cloud cover. Unlike a farmer, a satellite also knows nothing of local frost pockets or wind chill risks.

Corbeau Innovation has partnered with XpectralTEK to bring a new complementary precision viticulture platform to the UK. Addressing the gaps in the information provided by remote sensing, the new platform comprises the SensIT environmental sensor, the BACO vine leaf imager and an artificial intelligence user interface. Miguel Rodrigues, agronomist at XpectralTEK discussed the platform in a recent blog post.