Experimental areas for vine management.


The agricuture in general evolves on a temporal scale which is peculiar to it: those of the seasons, the years, the crop rotations. At the rhythm of life cycles and technical choices that are applied to it. In the case of crops, this time is specific to the crop species.

 

Vine is a species grown over a very long time. It matures with the years, and requires a concordance of very specific pedoclimatic conditions. This is why experimentation in this field must also be thought about over long time periods. Today some areas allow the testing of new practices, crop managements or grape varieties. These areas of experimentation and demonstration produce important knowledge that benefits the entire wine industry.

These testing areas are important for reasoning the adaptation to climate change at the scale of a regional vineyard: adaptation levers can be assessed separately, such as the grape variety, the modalities of management or irrigation, soil management , technical itineraries (dates of pruning, leaf stripping, date of harvest ...) ... These spaces can also make it possible to compare innovative wine-growing systems combining several of these levers, in participatory science approaches.

Experimenters are generally from public research in vinegrowing which can involve private players (companies, startups ...) in their approach. But it is not a fixed pattern, the organization itself of the experimental space and its players can constitute an innovation. The contribution is mutual in the shared production of knowledge for all the actors involved.

 

Author: Marc Nougier

Relational Mapping