A WORLD first to help vineyards throughout the North East detect the impact of smoke from bushfires will be operational in time for this summer.
The roll out of 100 sensors designed to detect the impact of smoke in vineyards is nearing completion, with the remaining units expected to be in place by the end of June.
The global first in any wine region in the world is all part of a project developed by a team headed by La Trobe University Professor Ian Porter.
Together with a new phone app it will give grape growers the necessary tools to help them make early decisions about their crop during a smoke event.
The sensors have been placed in vineyards from Rutherglen down to Glenrowan and throughout the King and Alpine valleys, with the final sensors heading east in coming days to locations in the Mount Beauty valley.
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COVID delays, global materials shortages and severe weather conditions threatened to derail the project but Professor Porter said they have pushed through to meet their June deadline.
"It's incredibly exciting to get them out but it has been a massive task to do it," he said.
"A six month delay on parts because of supply chain issues and massive price hikes left us worrying we wouldn't be able to deliver, but we have managed to get them built, evaluated, accredited and get them out there."
Professor Porter estimates it has taken over 300 hours to get all the sensors installed on sites, including coordinating remote access and wi–fi connection with growers.
But he said working through the issues will improve communication industry–wide, with the sensor units themselves designed to be durable and resist failure.
"The most important part is to get the hardware out there and fully operational, with training to follow on how to utilise the information they collect," he said.
The Wine Industry Smoke Detectors (known as 'WISDs') will do more than detect smoke – the also have the ability to measure air temperature and humidity, with adaptability to connect other sensors to assess such things as soil moisture, soil temperature and solar hours.
Professor Porter said having three weeks of extremely poor weather turned out to be fortuitous, allowing the team to test the capacity of the sensors' solar panels in limited light.
"We wanted to see if the solar panels would cope in a down period because during catastrophic bushfires there wouldn't be light either, so we've decided to increase the capacity of the solar input – the bad weather turned out to be a blessing," he said.
"Despite all the constraints we have faced, they will be out by the end of June, allowing a further six months to train growers on their use before the 2022/23 production season."
Professor Porter said that although the installation of the hardware was critical to do the job, the major part of the project was compiling all the data into a format to provide accurate real time risk assessment for smoke taint, drawing on factors including grape variety, distance from the burn, smoke exposure time and volume of fresh smoke.
He said those factors were all taken into account in the risk assessment – the part that is really powerful – and has taken eight years to put together and continues to be developed.
"In the first instance it will advise whether growers need to worry at all about the level of smoke and in heavy smoke conditions, whether grape testing or some form of wine mitigation method is required," he said.
"Most importantly, growers will save money at all times – when there is too little smoke to cause an impact and testing is not needed to the other extreme when predictions from large amounts of smoke will enable growers to make more accurate about decisions about harvesting a crop and whether to invest all the necessary associated costs," he said.
"It will save a lot of stress and panic in times of both low and extreme smoke."
The sensor's development has been funded through grants received by the North East Wine Zone (NEWZ) representing the Alpine Valley, King Valley, Glenrowan, Beechworth and Rutherglen wine regions.
It includes an $870,000 Federal and Victorian Government Regional Economic Stimulus and Resilience Grant received by Wines of the King Valley, following the 2020/2021 bushfires, with co–investment by La Trobe University and Wine Australia.
