vineyard thermal valencia — Grapes

Terraced vineyards on this estate have no consistent access for ground vehicles, so irrigation zones had been inferred from the vine age and the grower’s memory rather than measured. A dual-spectral platform pairing a thermal camera with a visible RGB camera produced a thermal index layer alongside the orthomosaic, and the difference between stressed and healthy canopy was enough to separate irrigation blocks by vigour rather than by assumption. Eleven previously unknown leak points were located in the first season, and the estate reduced water application by 24 per cent in the following year without loss of yield. The thermal window has to be captured carefully — a thermal camera reads canopy temperature, and the best contrast comes in the two hours after sunrise before the vines begin transpiring, when stressed vines stand out against the cooling canopy.