How Vineyard Management helps with decision making and improves management of Radgonske gorice vineyards
About Radgonske gorice
Radgonske Gorice is one of the biggest wineries in Slovenia. Historically famous for their high quality sparkling wines throughout the region, Radgonske Gorice offers a variety of wines, including the highest quality ones, throughout Slovenia, Europe, and even exports out of Europe. As an advanced winery which manages more than 500 hectares of vineyards, Radgonske Gorice quickly realized the benefits that may be achieved by using information technology in the vineyard. Some of their vineyards are in a completely ecological production with certification, while the majority is in integrated production model – which means that on all of their vineyards, strict standards for environment protection and traceability need to be met, and that their grape production.
500+ ha of vineyards
Implement ing Vineyard Management in Radgonske gor ice vineyards and improved management
The winery started with the adoption of Vineyard Management’s initial product, the decision support system, a few years ago in their vineyard with certified ecological production. In ecological production, only a limited number of biological pesticides can be used, therefore the application of pesticides needs to be timed very precisely. Moreover, all of the activities need to be traced in a particular format which is used during the audits of the grape production process, done by the certification authority. “Vineyard Management system in our vineyards allows us to learn more about the situation in different sectors of our vineyards, which is crucial for making good decisions”, recalls Gorazd Kovačič, the vineyard manager at Radgonske Gorice, and continues: “Having an automated weather station is great already for simple things, like monitoring how much rain there was over the next few days, and with Vineyard Management’s alerts for diseases, we have another warning layer that reminds us where to pay special attention.” Following the initial season, the vineyard management key team decided to expand Vineyard Management usage across their non-ecological vineyards as well. New weather stations were included in representative locations, and other vineyards were included in the system. Based on the work logging, the work norms are calculated automatically, allowing the vineyard managers who manage a fleet of tractors and dozens of manual workers to stay in control of the workflow. "Farming is not a spreadsheet. It’s hard to keep track of everything, for example to know which tractorists stopped spraying some day and why – maybe due to the wind, or the rain - a solution that can help you with such organization related things is very welcome,” adds Gorazd Kovačič, mentioning also that “now, we also see the variability in weather, rainfall, and so on across our vineyards, and understand better why the pests develop the way they do – so we can organize accordingly, too.” The four vineyard managers, together managing dozens of workers who keep 500+ hectares of vineyards in a prime condition, with the goal of producing their famous high quality wines and sparkling wines agree that they never thought an information technology product can bring so much value to their work – until they implemented it. “Now we’re here, and we see that technology is playing a big role also in our work – we save tons of time we’d normally use for sitting in the office, and avoid a lot of trouble down the line that we would have without this system.”, recalls Gorazd Kovačič adding that they really like Vineyard Management’s flexible and systematic approach to the delivering solid solutions to their problems.
The decision support models in Vineyard Management are based on years of research, and their development and refinement in Vineyard Management is today also in the 5th year already. Together with the team, inventory and time management tools that Vineyard Management provides, those models help growers decide what to do when – the decision being the first step, upon which all of the other optimizations and organization activities are done. Matic Šerc who leads the development of Vineyard Management is visibly proud: "The team at Vineyard Management is pushing innovation in data analytics for agriculture. Dealing with big quantity of data and getting insights out of them can be a tiring work, but when a client opens the annual customer meeting with 'We are regularly monitoring the models, they are very useful for taking spraying decisions’ - that's just priceless, it makes your day." he recalls, continuing by explaining "we are on the mission to make agriculture more sustainable and environmentally friendly, and when someone with really high knowledge tells us that our product is delivering, without being asked, then we know we're on the right path."
Contrary to any of the competitive solutions on the market, Vineyard Management doesn’t give you only classic, decades old weather-based models results for Downy mildew and Powdery mildew pressure; on top of those scientifically developed and proven models and methods, Vineyard Management applies predictive analytics technology on the combined data sets about the weather, soil, plant, and activities, to bring decision support to a new level.
This technology was developed by Vineyard Management under EU Research and Development programs in collaboration with experts from different backgrounds, and evolved as well as tested in practice through multiple years together with our progressive customers on multiple continents. Radgonske Gorice is just one of the example wineries using Vineyard Management’s power of the latest, well proven technologies, combined with the simplicity of use, and multi-season testing.
