ApeX-Vigne: experiences in monitoring vine water status from within-field to regional scales using crowdsourcing data from a free mobile phone application

Abstract

Monitoring vine water status is a major issue for vineyard management because water constraints impact both the quality and the quantity of the harvest. Existing methods are often costly and complex to implement. ApeX-Vigne is a free mobile application developed to facilitate the collection and geolocation of 50 vine apex observations to characterise vine shoot growth and classify it into 3 growth categories. The application also provides the user with a simple estimate of vine water status based on shoot growth. This paper presents the results obtained over two seasons (2019 and 2020) after the launch of the Apex-Vigne application and its use over a large wine producing region in the south of France. An existing method was adapted for evaluating the interest of the application based on the number of installations and uninstallations. The results showed that the application had more than 1200 downloads and 6000 observations made in the 2020 season. Examples from the commercially collected data showed that ApeX-Vigne can be used as a tool for characterizing water stress at within-field and inter-field scales. Finally, it was also demonstrated that by enabling the massive and centralized collection of spatial field and within-field scale observations of shoot growth, the ApeX-Vigne data was able to characterise the spatial structure of vine water status at the regional scale. Access to this new source of information offers opportunities for the management of water resources at a regional scale as well as for site-and vineyard-specific management. These results also raised new research questions on the joint use of this new source of spatial data with other sources of high spatial resolution information.

GranoScan: an AI-powered mobile app for in-field identification of biotic threats of wheat

“…Briefly comparing GranoScan on recognition features towards other diagnostic apps, which are supported by scientific articles and listed in the Introduction section, these are the main outcomes. ApeX−Vigne ( Pichon et al., 2021 ) monitors water status using crowdsourcing data but is dedicated to grapevine and hence is not suitable for a proper comparison. BioLeaf ( MaChado et al., 2016 ) measures only foliar damage caused by insects, estimating the percentage of foliar surface disrupted (% defoliation); it encompasses neither insect species recognition nor other categories of threats.…”

“…Nevertheless, free apps available in online stores and supported by a research paper are quite rare. Among those, it is worth mentioning: ApeX−Vigne, which monitors vine water status using crowdsourcing data ( Pichon et al., 2021 ); Plantix, which detects, through deep learning algorithms, diseases, pests, and nutritional deficiencies in 30 crop types ( Tibbetts, 2018 ); BioLeaf, which measures in situ foliar damage caused by insects ( MaChado et al., 2016 ); PlantifyAI, for diagnosing 26 diseases across 14 crop species by offering also control methods ( Shrimali, 2021 ); and PlantVillage Nuru, which leverages a crowdsensing platform for plant disease diagnosis in developing countries ( Coletta et al., 2022 ). Within this group, no mobile applications are specifically dedicated to wheat crop.…”

Monitoring vineyard water status using Sentinel-2 images: qualitative survey on five wine estates in the south of France

“…The results obtained here are promising for future operational service in the Mediterranean region and further investigations will be done in other regions with different agronomic practices (e.g., grass, inter-row). The next step is to test this model systematically on many vine fields in real-time and asking winegrowers to go on the field and check the consistency of the water status estimation by measuring Ψ stem or using a within-field notation with a mobile application like ApeX-Vigne (Pichon et al, 2021), for example.…”

Observation of shoot growth: a simple and operational decision-making tool for monitoring vine water status in the vineyard

“…To date, these operational considerations have limited the widespread use of this approach. The development of mobile applications simplifying all these operations (Pichon et al, 2021) should encourage the adoption of this approach by winegrowers and their advisors. This study could help operators use it as rigorously as possible.…”