The overarching objective of VISCA is to facilitate increased climate resilience of wine production in the south of Europe, while minimizing costs to wine growers.
The project team has co-designed, co-developed and validated a Climate Service and Decision Support System (VISCA CS-DSS) to help farmers adapt to climate change. It includes the following services:
- Weather forecast with two timescales: short-term (two days ahead) and mid-term (ten days ahead). These forecast services have been designed to provide specific weather information to plan daily activities as well as to anticipate extreme events like spring frost, heat waves, strong winds or heavy precipitation by using high-resolution downscaling approaches
- Seasonal forecast consisting of a multi-model forecast of seasonal climate up to six months ahead
- Phenological forecast that includes a bud-break model, a berry model (predicting flowering and veraison) and a leaf model (predicting vegetative growth of the plant including the berries and their ripening)
- Irrigation recommendations, which provide irrigation forecasts considering plant water demands, past weather observations, weather forecasts and water stress strategy.
These features can be visualized through the VISCA Data Platform, which also enables the user to provide feedback with actual data from the field. All services have been tested at three pilot sites in Portugal, Spain and Italy. In addition, two innovative crop management techniques have been tested: crop forcing and shoot trimming to observe their added value in climate adaptation.
