Coffee Pot participants were able to take part in a demonstration of rate shoot thinning at the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Laboratory in Portland.

Dr. Terry Bates of the Lake Erie Regional Grape Program at the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Laboratory was host to an “on-the-fly” variable rate demonstration at a recent program coffee pot meeting.

The extension team holds coffee pot meetings every Wednesday during the growing season from early May through the end of July. Meetings are hosted by growers across the Lake Erie Grape Belt on their farms and in their barns. The extension team provides the coffee and donuts, the agenda is usually set by grower questions.

The May 10 meeting was different in that it was held at CLEREL and was started with a demonstration of a portion of the research being conducted as part of the USDA/NIFA SCRI Efficient Vineyard project. Bates said vineyards can be scanned using Normalized Difference Vegetative Index technology which shows the amount of photosynthetic (green) matter in the vineyard at the time of scanning. During the early season, this accounts for the shoots that are just emerging from the canes and are 2-3 inches in length. With the map in hand, the grower can go into the vineyard and validate the information in each of the zones (i.e. how many shoots are in a low vigor zone or a high vigor zone) by counting the number of shoots on the vines in each of the zones. The shoot numbers can be applied back to the NDVI map and a shoot count map can be created. With the map and the right technology, a grower can input the data into a field computer in their tractor which will then control the hydraulics of the shoot thinner. The map provides the computer with vigor zones from low to high causing the shoot thinning head to speed up to remove a higher percentage of shoots in the high vigor zones, and where there are less, the shoot thinner will slow down and remove less shoots. The goal is to create a uniform vine size across the vineyard block optimizing production.

The 30 growers in attendance were shown how the shoot thinner responds to the maps without operator involvement. Rhiann Jakubowski, GIS technician, created a “fake map” of the parking lot so the attendees would be able to see how the thinning heads sped up or slowed down according to the zones from the map. The tractor operator then drove through the vineyard providing growers a firsthand look at variable rate shoot thinning. For growers in the Lake Erie region of New York and Pennsylvania interested in taking the first step toward variable rate management, contact a member of the LERGP extension team to set up an NDVI scan of a vineyard. For more information about the Efficient Vineyard project, visit efficientvineyard.com. To learn more about the Lake Erie Regional Grape Program, visit lergp.com. The Lake Erie Regional Grape Program team has started producing weekly podcasts and the latest podcast has Bates explaining shoot thinning that can be found at lergp.com/podcasts.