Kara Maraden is in charge of rather a lot of vineyards.
The director of viticulture at large US wine firm Foley Family Farms, she is responsible for more than 5,200 acres (2,000 hectares) of vines, scattered across 1,000 miles of California and Oregon.
She obviously cannot be everywhere at once, but thanks to AI technology, Ms Maraden can remotely check on the water requirements of individual vineyards from her laptop.
“I can go online and see what irrigations are needed down in Santa Barbara, 300 miles away,” says Mr Maraden, who is based in Napa, north west of San Francisco.
While judging the water requirements of the vines would previously have been done by human judgement and calculation, Foley now uses sensors made by Tule Technologies, a California-based irrigation company.
The sensors, which look like mini weather stations, are placed across the vineyards. They measure moisture levels, temperatures, wind speeds, and other environmental variables.
All this data is then fed into Tule’s AI software system, which has been trained to calculate how much moisture will evaporate from both the soil and the vines under different weather conditions. The AI then determines how much irrigation the vines need and when, and informs the vineyard managers via an app notification.
“We’re always boots on the ground,” adds Ms Maraden. “But the data helps us make informed decisions based on science, as opposed to just feelings. Feelings aren’t bad, but we like to use data.”
