Vineyards worldwide are subjected to spatial variability, which can be exhibited in both low and high yield areas. We developed a variable rate drip irrigation (VRDI) concept to reduce such variability. The VRDI system divides the vineyard into 30×30-meter irrigation zones, enabling individual irrigation of each zone according to normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) maps. The first VDRI system was installed in on a 1.2-hectare vineyard Syrah red grape in Israel. With the VRDI system, the yield, leaf area index (LAI), canopy size, water potential, and primary juice chemical analysis results were very uniformed in comparison to previous years without the system.

The goal of this work was the assessment of commercial vineyard water status using on-the-go thermal imaging. On-the-go thermal imaging acquisition was conducted with a thermal camera operating at 1.20 m distance from the canopy, mounted on a quad moving at 5 km/h. Canopy temperature, cross water stress index (CWSI) and stomatal conductance index (Ig) were strongly and significantly correlated to stem water potential (Ψstem) in east and west side of the canopy. For CWSI, the values of the coefficient of determination (R2) were 0.88*** and 0.73*** for east and west sides, respectively. As regards the index Ig, its relationships with Ψstem showed R2=0.89*** and R2=0.77*** for east and west sides, respectively. These results are promising and evidence the potential of on-the-go thermal imaging to become a new tool to evaluate the vineyard water status.