Vineyard Information System for Technology and Automation (VISTA)

The UK wine industry is growing rapidly in size and in sophistication. But even as British wines are winning more and more awards, the industry faces rising labour costs, changing climate conditions, and pressure to reduce reliance on fertilisers and chemical agents.

We believe the solution to these challenges is to adopt a data-driven approach to farming. The vineyard of the future will be built on software systems that understand where the crop is and what its condition is. The autonomous farming systems of the future will run on high resolution maps of the vineyard, showing them the location of each vine, row, post, irrigation pump and more.

The VISTA project is developing the digital maps that will drive the shift to data-driven farming. We are building the VISTA-Map, an open source mapping protocol that can be used on any commercial vineyard in the UK or in the rest of the world. The map will be high resolution, easy to integrate with other farming systems, and will support data from a variety of sources.

Using drones and ground robot systems, we will create high resolution maps of several UK vineyards and use them in two practical applications. First, the VISTA-Map will then be used to generate high accuracy harvest yield estimates for the vineyards. Having better yield forecasts before harvest will allow growers to secure a better price for their crop, and reduce the amount of crop that is wasted because it cannot be sold. Second, the VISTA-Map will be used to create precision application maps, where chemical agents or fertilisers are applied in varying rates using GPS-guided machinery. Using precision techniques like this is common in other areas of farming, and results in reductions of chemical usage and increases in crop yield.

The project consortium will also explore how the VISTA-Map could be expanded into a full vineyard digital twin, capturing and modelling aspects of the crop such as weather and climate, soil health, disease mapping and irrigation.

To achieve this project, we have assembled a fantastic consortium for this work. Partners bring expertise in viticulture, crop monitoring, drones, robot systems, and 3D and semantic mapping.

The VISTA project is a clear route for the UK vineyard industry to move to data-driven farming, providing a solid foundation of data to tackle the problems facing growers in the present and the future.