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Crop Monitoring

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Case Study

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"I use ēKo to monitor my 4.4 acre vineyard on the western slopes of Napa Valley. We live 86 miles from our vineyard and being able to keep track of things remotely enables us to react faster and keep small problems from becoming big problems. The three things I like best about ēKo are its scalability to large numbers of sensing sites, the robustness of its networking over a large vineyard area, and finally the total cost of the system which is the best value I have seen. The uses for this system are only limited by your imagination. I recommend it highly and wouldn’t grow grapes without it."

Mark Holler
Co-Owner/ Grape Grower/Winemaker
Camalie Vineyards
Mt. Veeder, Napa, Ca.

Crop Monitoring Profile: Camalie Vineyard
Background
Mark Holler is the owner, grape grower, and winemaker at Camalie Vineyards in Napa, California. He is a viticulturist and a technology enthusiast who has been working closely with Crossbow in the development and testing of the ēKo platform over the past two years to increase the quality and quantity of his grape harvest by using and controlling his water resources. With the data he collected from the ēKo platform, Mark has been able to minimize his water use and maximize his yield despite the low water season in 2007. This achievement was not only due to the ēKo system's ability to collect data, but Mark's ability to analyze the data and apply it to his growing techniques.

Challenge in Achieving Consistent Quality
Camalie Vineyards is a 4.4 acre hillside vineyard in the midst of redwood and oak forests in the Mt. Veeder Appellation of Napa Valley. Even though it is a small vineyard it has ten distinct areas, each with its own unique combination of soil, sun exposure, and climate. Some blocks are sandier and more exposed which causes them to dry out faster while others have heavy clay and are more protected which enables them to hold water longer. The rate at which water moves through these soils is different too which is why it is important to monitor soil moisture at different depths at each location. This makes it challenging to determine how to apply just the right amount of water at the right time to each area to achieve consistent, high quality grapes.

Choosing ēKo for Grape Monitoring
Given the 10 distinct areas with its own unique combination of climate and soil properties, Mark's initial approach in monitoring these micro climates was to use a weather station. He soon found that it wouldn't scale up to more than two sites for soil moisture sensing and its wireless range was only about 200 ft. Thus, he started looking for a better solution.

Mark turned to ēKo Pro Series to monitor these micro climates and manage his irrigation. His initial deployment was to gather soil moisture data from four sites which he used to define irrigation intervals and durations. He then expanded the system to ten soil moisture sensing sites. By monitoring all ten blocks he was able to tailor his irrigation for each block to meet the specific soil and climate requirements.

Easy to Deploy, Use, and Scale
“It took me less than an hour to deploy a node with two soil moisture sensors at two depths, and most of the labor involved is in burying the sensors," said Mark. Adding sensing sites and sensors couldn’t be more straightforward with ēKo’s advanced self-organizing wireless mesh technology which means zero software configuration when adding a sensing node.

“Thanks to Crossbow’s advanced wireless technology, I seldom have to worry about range or where I can place the sensing nodes," said Mark. “It is highly reliable and scales up easily to monitor whatever I want to know about my vineyard, especially soil moisture status," With ēKo’s high reliability and easy scalability, Mark has expanded his monitoring to include irrigation system components and wine storage facilities. He now monitors water source pressures, tank and reservoir levels, and pressure drop across my irrigation head’s filter. He is also monitoring temperatures where his cased goods and wine aging in barrels is stored. Currently, his ēKo network has grown to 27 sensing locations now and he expects it will continue to grow.

Lastly, with ēKo’s web application, growers can start monitoring their sensor data right away with ready-built charts and dive into specific sensor information in more detail. Mark adds, “The system is easier to use than your GPS". The nodes are solar powered so you just place them in your vineyard, and the data shows up on a web page you can view from anywhere.

Greater Yield, Higher Quality & Reduced Water use
In the water scarce appellation of Mt. Veeder soil moisture monitoring has been invaluable in improving Camalie’s grape quality and yields.

In 2007, the second year of monitoring, Camalie achieved 3.97 tons/acre growing Cabernet Sauvignon with only 34 gallons/vine total irrigation from June to harvest. This quantity of yield is very rare on Mt. Veeder especially with water limited due to less than half the normal rainfall in the winter of 2006/07. It was a dry year and required trucking water at the end of the season. Water had to be purchased but thanks to their precision irrigation the vineyard minimized water purchasing and still had great yields. Fruit quality was excellent as before.

In addition, Mark was able to direct his repair man to more quickly resolve a refrigeration problem recently from two nodes that was placed in the cold box and freezer of a refrigerator. By viewing the temp trend data, he had it fixed within an hour. Lastly, Mark ended up with multiple offers of multi-year contracts for his grapes at his asking price. When shown the monitoring system, all of the winemakers were impressed and took the use of this system as evidence that Camalie Vineyard pay more attention to its vines which they did.

“With precision knowledge of the soil moisture status at 10 locations and two depths I was able to minimize my water purchases while optimizing yield and quality. I wouldn’t grow grapes without ēKo Pro now. At a cost less than many weather stations it is easy to justify adding the visibility it gives you into where your water is in the soil. I highly recommend ēKo Pro from Crossbow Technology."

Leading the revolution to connect the physical world with the digital world through wireless sensor networks, the Crossbow Solutions blog highlights innovative and exciting ways customers are using this technology.

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