Introducing on the go selective harvest in wine grape vineyard: criticality and chance.

Mechanical grape harvesting is worldwide spreading rapidly. At present, looking around the main wine makers sites, the mechanization ranging between 3% of Argentina, to 75% of Australia. In Europe approximately 40% of the overall productions is mechanically picked up. The main reason is the need to reduce production costs, instead quality parameter often is assumed such us secondary condition into decision making system. Nevertheless, in an increasingly wide and competitive international market, the management of quality grapes appears an effective way for differentiating and enhance profits. In wine industry this perspective has been implemented through precision viticulture techniques, oriented towards selective harvesting. Recently a new grape harvester developed by New holland Agriculture has allowed to overcome this barrier using a patented selection system (EnoControlTM system) able to sorting two type of harvest quality on the go. To that chance, this study sought to analyze criticality and potential of selective harvesting in Italy. The study was carried out in 2015 season in four vineyards as many varieties, for a whole of 24 Ha located in central Italy. Specifically, a combination of proximal sensing based on NDVI vegetation index compared to main productivecomposition parameters and berry sensory analysis were employed. Results, as a whole, highlighted the usefulness of Enocontrol selective system to achieve higher grape quality and from its relative wines.