VitiMeteo - Prognostic system for crop protection in viticulture.

VitiMeteo

VitiMeteo is a prognostic system for crop protection in viticulture. The platform offers forecast models, weather data, and monitoring for viticulture based on weather measurements in vineyards, weather forecasts, and observations of the vines.

VitiMeteo is a joint project by:

• State Viticulture Institute Freiburg
• Agroscope Switzerland
• GEOsens GmbH
• Supported by the Baden-Württemberg Ministry for Rural Areas and Consumer Protection

Since 2009, meteoblue has been supplying the platform with weather forecasts. Consultants and winegrowers in several countries across Europe, Africa, and Australia rely on meteoblue forecasts, which have reached unique accuracy with the help of mLM technology.

Ronald Krause, head of informatics at VitiMeteo, explains why they chose meteoblue as a provider:

"We realised from the start that this project will be extremely challenging technologically, but the goal was clear, to provide winegrowers with state-of-the-art technology and up-to-date information. When we were looking for a partner to supply weather forecast data at the time, it was only meteoblue that was able to provide weather data for all of Europe and beyond."

Customer success story

...like a fine wine

Viticulture means winegrowing, which is the cultivation and harvesting of grapes. This story looks at what happens when the ancient craft of wine production meets information technology and big data.

Farmers and the weather

Agriculture has always depended on the weather. For centuries, farmers largely relied on experience and traditional sayings rather than trustworthy forecast information. This changed significantly in the 20th century with numerical weather prediction and continues to progress as modern computing power enables more accurate forecasts, longer forecast horizons, more variables, and improved probability. This makes weather forecasting more reliable and increases effectiveness across agriculture, including viticulture.

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Introducing VitiMeteo

VitiMeteo is a consortium involving Swiss Agroscope, the German State Institute of Viticulture, and the private company GEOsens. The system provides winegrowers with information about plant diseases and their treatment in real time and in an intuitively understandable way.

Ronald Krause, co-founder of GEOsens and a long-term member of the VitiMeteo consortium, describes the mission:

"VitiMeteo is an international project, involving a variety of organisations from both the private and public sector. Our aim is to provide support for decision-making in the realm of viticulture."

The story behind VitiMeteo

According to Krause, the origins of VitiMeteo are connected to the fight to protect viticulture from diseases that arrived in Europe from the New World in the second half of the 19th century. Wine-producing areas were heavily affected, and only rigorous scientific work by wine-growing experts helped build a foundation for science-based cultivation. This work ultimately led to the foundation of the State Institute of Viticulture in Freiburg. Decades later, the institute launched VitiMeteo, which became one of the most prominent disease forecast systems in Europe.

What VitiMeteo offers today

VitiMeteo’s interactive interface provides:

• Weather information from numerical forecasts and weather station measurements
• Updates about outbreaks of fungal diseases
• Information on insect parasites
• Phenology updates
• Additional viticulture-relevant indicators

Why bespoke forecasting matters

VitiMeteo requires more than a generic weather forecast. As Krause explains, predicting plant diseases depends on uncommon parameters, including leaf wetness.

"As we specialize in the prediction of plant diseases, we work with some highly uncommon parameters, such as leaf wetness."

Leaf wetness is critical for many plant diseases. While sensors can measure it, forecasting leaf wetness is challenging. Krause explains that at the time, meteoblue was the only weather service able to provide this variable. Since then, the teams have worked together to continuously improve the forecast quality, and meteoblue now delivers highly detailed leaf wetness forecasts for agricultural use.

Cheers to fruitful cooperation

Krause describes the long-term partnership as reliable and consistently high quality, and he emphasizes that data quality is what will continue to make the difference for viticulture in the future.

"We have relied on meteoblue for more than a decade now, and although we have been working with other services in some projects, we never have even thought of switching. The meteoblue service has been always technically 100% reliable and has always delivered a top-quality forecast. The meteoblue team has been able to come up with a convincing solution for every question we asked them. Working with meteoblue was, and is, one of the best professional experiences I can think of, and we intend to continue in the future."

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