An innovative frost forecasting and management project is exploring the way our frost systems are currently used and how owners can forecast weather risk to prevent yield loss.

Freezing temperatures can be a major issue for many UK vineyards, specifically for the emerging buds and new shoots.

The ‘Vineyard Frost’ project is helping to put systems in place to reduce the threat of yield loss and allow vineyard workers to focus on risk areas.

The project, titled ‘Smarter Forecasting, Communications and Management of Frost Risk in Vineyards’, is an innovative frost forecasting and management project, funded by Innovate UK and the Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs (DEFRA), which aims to revolutionise frost-related crop protection. 

Current frost protection methods are labour intensive, making it costly to run. But this project, as well as helping to aid the development of domestic viticulture and the UK’s expanding agricultural sector, has the potential to reduce labour efforts and costs whilst offering a preventative solution to one of viticulture’s biggest problems. 

UK vineyards are expected to remain vulnerable to frost events as climate change is causing warmer springs and earlier budburst. 

Knowing when a frost is likely to hit can help warn vineyard managers when they need to take preventative measures to protect their crop.

This not only helps to protect this year’s harvest, but also the year after.

The project will create hyper-localised, site-specific and variety-specific frost risk forecasts, enabling vineyard managers to make more informed, targeted and sustainable choices when responding to frost events.

It uses site topographic information and AI modelling to provide information specific to bud height, as opposed to the standard weather measurement height, whilst monitoring the variability of temperature in the vineyard.

In addition, advice can be given based on the type of frost that is identified, radiation frost or advection frost.

Data can then be collected from the vineyard to produce results in a web app on the VineBuddy portal.

The information can be viewed on any device at any time by the vineyard manager, which will show measurement and forecast details.

Frost alerts can also be sent as a direct notification to the vineyard manager’s phone with warnings of incoming frost and the time it is likely to arrive.

These forecasts will reduce the threat of yield loss and allow vineyard workers to focus on at-risk areas and the intervention techniques based on the conditions.

The project, delivered by a consortium composed of WeatherQuest, Plumpton College, Vinescapes, Vinewatch, Wines of Great Britain (WineGB) and the UK Agri-Tech Centre, will help to support UK vineyard efficiency, profitability and sustainability, while providing an open standard that can be adopted in other parts of the world.

It builds on valuable data from the Bud Burst Hub completed by vineyards across the UK earlier this year, which explores the systems currently used by vineyard owners and managers to monitor the data they collect as well as monitor frost risk.


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