(Wines&Vines) - The day after harvest finished at Johnson Estate Winery in Westfield, N.Y., winery owner Fred Johnson took his brand new drone out to the vineyard and sent it up to shoot video of the countryside around the winery. Less than a week later, Johnson had a 2-minute, 20-second video featuring spectacular vineyard photography, trees at the height of fall color and Lake Erie in the distance. 

However, Johnson plans to use the drone for much more than taking pretty pictures. Row crop farmers have used GPS soil mapping for several years, and now extension personnel from the Cornell Lake Erie Research and Extension Laboratory—located just down the road from the winery—have started developing vineyard maps that combine information from soil and spatial sensors to help growers obtain more accurate crop estimation. Last year, the extension specialists mapped Johnson’s vineyards, so he now has the coordinates for his 110 acres of vineyard.

“I plan to take videos of our vineyards with the drone’s camera about four times a year: once when the vines have about 1.5 feet of growth, and again at full growth. I’ll definitely do one before harvest and one after harvest,” Johnson told Wines & Vines. “Stressed vines drop leaves more quickly, and the exact location shows up in the videos. I can get a feeling when driving the tractor down the rows, but I can’t take photos of the weak spots as I drive.”

According to Johnson, the glacial till soils of the area between Lake Erie and the escarpment have diagonal bands of clay soil running through them, and those bands show up as the most stressed vines in the photos. “We need to fertilize more in those areas that are stressed. There’s less available to the vines because of the soil structure.”