2001b) Airborne/spaceborne remote sensing for the grape and wine industry

Abstract The emergence of precision agriculture technologies and methodologies (data mapping) in the grape & wine industry have catalysed renewed interest in airborne/spaceborne remote sensing as a means of rapidly identifying spatial variations in productivity (yield and quality). Although remote sensing in agriculture has undergone a revival since the early nineties, a significant proportion of this has been in applications involving fullcover crops such as cereals and pulses. Quantifying crop vigour is often simply a case of discriminating and measuring regions of differing crop density. In practise this is achieved by identifying different mixtures of crop and underlying soils/stubble/water spectral signatures. Grapevines, however, are typical of row crops in that vigour is expressed not only as canopy density, but also in canopy dimensions. Algorithms capable of quantifying vine density as well as the spatial extent of the canopy are necessary to allow integration of remotely-sensed imagery with on-ground biophysical data in the search for possible indicators of productivity. This presentation examines the potential of airborne/spaceborne remote sensing, in the context of basic performance criteria, for measuring and mapping variability in vine vigour and, subsequently, productivity