Incubator Initiative - How does phenological stage influence grapevine water requirements for Shiraz and Chardonnay in the Riverland?

While there is a general understanding that plant water requirements under any given weather conditions are strongly dependent upon the phenological stage the crop is experiencing at the time, this relationship is not sufficiently well understood to enable the irrigation manager to use this knowledge to actively control and fine tune the canopy and crop development. This project aims to better understand this relationship and integrating it into irrigation management principles has the potential for greatly increasing the water usage efficiencies for irrigated grape vines. The relative water use relationships between the identified phenological stages will provide knowledge to determine the most appropriate crop coefficient (Kc) at each phenological stage, thus enabling the determination of daily water usage. These relationships could then be manipulated to fine-tune irrigation management and thus crop and canopy development to obtain desired fruit yield and quality outcomes.