The cultivation of grapevines in Mexico for wine production is one of the activities that has gained most strength in recent years, mainly in the states of Guanajuato, Querétaro, San Luis Potosí, Coahuila, Sonora, Baja California and Puebla. According to the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development, Mexico’s wine industry produces almost 36 million liters of wine per year and uses around 73 thousand tons of industrial grapes.
Due to the importance of this crop and as part of a series of interviews we conducted during the 14th. edition of the International Conference on Precision Agriculture, we present the opinion of researcher Javier Tardaguila, associate professor in viticulture at the University de La Rioja and researcher in charge of the TELEVITIS Group at the Institute of Vine and Wine Sciences in Spain.
According to Tardaguila, Spain is one of the European countries with the greatest development of technological applications, research and practical uses of Precision Agriculture. Such as Real Time applications to evaluate the state of the crop, in addition to having the best technology in the cellars where wine is stored and matured.
For the Spanish researcher, it is essential to be able to take technological advances to the vineyard, since it is where much is decided for the quality of the grapes and the wine produced from them. Therefore, it is necessary to have technology that provides information that allows making efficient and reasoned decisions, such as when to irrigate, where to irrigate, as well as where, when and how to apply pesticides.
In this sense, for Tardaguila it is essential to abandon uniform application practices. In addition, he commented on the need to be able to carry out soil studies to know the previous state of the soil before planting.
Image credit: Mexican Wine Council website.
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