Retrieving total transpirable soil water in a rainfed vineyard using vine shoot growth, weather, and Sentinel-2 data

Yulin Zhang, Léo Pichon, Sébastien Roux, Anne Pellegrino, Guillaume Coulouma and Bruno Tisseyre

Agricultural Water Management, 2025, vol. 318, issue C

Abstract: Winegrowers must regulate grapevine water status, as it significantly influences plant vigor, yield, wine aroma, and ultimately the market value of the final product. Total Transpirable Soil Water (TTSW)—the maximum water available for grapevine extraction—plays a critical role in vineyard water management. However, direct measurement of TTSW is operationally challenging, lacks spatial representativeness, and is especially complex for deep-rooted, rainfed vineyards, which dominate Mediterranean regions. This study proposes a low-cost, scalable methodology for TTSW estimation, adapting an Inverse Modeling approach to incorporate accessible data sources: vine shoot growth indices based on simple visual observations, weather data, and Sentinel-2 imagery. The adapted model was evaluated in a rainfed vineyard in Southern France across six vine plots, achieving a mean absolute error of 30 mm compared to benchmark methods. Given the TTSW range, this error is considered acceptable. The method performed best in plots without dead or missing vines and required less than one hour of fieldwork per plot, offering substantial operational advantages over traditional soil profile analysis. Additionally, the method demonstrated lower estimation uncertainty than the traditional soil-based benchmark. This study highlights the potential of integrating TTSW inverse modeling with accessible data sources, particularly vine shoot growth indices, to develop a cost-effective and scalable protocol for TTSW estimation in rainfed vineyards. These findings address a critical gap in water management knowledge for non-irrigated vineyards and offer practical benefits for winegrowers in water-scarce regions.

Keywords: Inverse modeling (IM); TTSW; Low-cost data; Soil water balance (SWB) model; Mediterranean climate (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:agiwat:v:318:y:2025:i:c:s0378377425004743

DOI: 10.1016/j.agwat.2025.109760

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