What are the potentialities of the multifunctional management of irrigation in the vineyard ? How can it reduce the negative effect of the meteorological stresses, as heat waves o late frosts ? These are some of the questions that the ADAM project is willing to answer. The ADAM project, climate change ADAptation with Multifunctional irrigation for viticulture – is a project, realized by the Department of Agricultural and Environmental Sciences - Production, Territory, Agroenergy (DiSAA) of the University of Milan and co-financed by the Lombardy Region, which started in 2019. Objectives- The project explore the potentialities of the multifunctional management of the vineyard irrigation to face the challenges given by summer stresses (hydric and thermo-radiation-based) and spring late frosts. These phenomena cause vineyard productivity losses as well as grape quality decrease and seems to become more and more frequent due to climate change. Some recent researches shown that an adequate irrigation management (the so-called multifunctional irrigation) can help to reduce the negative effects caused by these meteorological stresses. Therefore, the project aims to compare three types of irrigation: • traditional drip irrigation; • controlled ed drip irrigation aiming at the thermo-radiation-based stresses protection and at the soil moisture content to improve the grape ripening; • controlled drip irrigation with mini sprinkler aiming at the protection against thermo-radiation-based stresses and late frosts and at the soil moisture content in order to improve grape ripening; The objective of the comparison between the technics are: • to check, through field experiments, the effectiveness of multifunctional irrigation and to define protocols of irrigation management suitable for the sparkling wines and the “ready to drink” white wines; • to develop suitable and easy to implement technics to perform grape vine hydric status field monitoring in a quick and economic way, based on the use of optical sensors; • to check the sustainability of multifunctional irrigation at farm level as well as irrigation district level, in the Colli Morenici del Garda territory. Experimental site. The vineyard chosen for the experiment of the ADAM project is in Cavriana (MN), in the Colli Morenici territory, in the southern area of the Garda lake and is specialized in sparkling and white wines production. The year 2019 has been dedicated to project starting activities such as experimental irrigation system set-up and the field measurement starting. So far, the following tasks have been completed: • measurements of the experimental site soil variability with non-invasive technics and soil samples analysis • choice of the eight experimental areas (two for every treatment, as well as two control areas without irrigation) • irrigation pilot system realization aiming to test the three irrigation treatments • sensor installation for the monitoring of moisture content soil • periodical field measurements campaign to check the physiological status of the vegetation with traditional, optical and thermal infrared technics.
