Combining Tradition and Technology: IoT Solutions for Optimal Wine Production

Bodegas Langa is currently the main winery in Calatayud. The winery is located at the foot of the emblematic Sierra Vicor, in the territory of El Frasno, within the Calatayud region. Some of its vines are over a century old due to the care of an uninterrupted family tradition. The Langa family founded the D.O.P. Calatayud in 1989, and they managed to have Bodegas Langa recognized as a historical company by the CAVA Regulatory Council.

 

Today, Juan and César Langa González represent the fifth generation of a family that, over 150 years, has been faithful to the inherited tradition while incorporating the necessary advances to adapt to the increasing demands in wine-making.

THE CHALLENGE

CLIMATE CHANGE IS CHANGING THE PHENOLOGICAL CALENDAR

 

Like the rest of the wine industry, the Langa family has seen how the phenological calendar of the vineyards has been impacted by global warming. According to algorithmic models and climate change scenarios, and depending on the grape variety, these changes could worsen throughout the 21st century, advancing the harvest between 2 and 2.5 months to avoid the high temperatures that are already occurring in September in the northern hemisphere.

THE SOLUTION

The installation of an intelligent Smart Agriculture solution from Libelium at Bodegas Langa represents “a great opportunity to take another step towards excellence,” in the words of César Langa, Technical Director of Bodegas Langa. “We are used to making decisions based on a historical knowledge of the area, our workers, the tradition of operations, and often we wondered if the decisions we made were well taken. We needed to make decisions based on objective data that gave us a real vision of what the status is at a given moment. And not only to know but also to optimize the resources we have,” says César.

 

César Langa is part of the innovative generation of farmers who have enthusiastically embraced the potential of new technologies, allowing him to acquire deep knowledge of his production without facing the difficulties that his ancestors had to endure in agricultural work.

 

The knowledge treasured by the intuition and know-how of a long tradition is now supplemented by artificial intelligence provided by Libelium’s IoT technology.

The solution installed in its vineyards is a Plug & Sense! Smart Agriculture PRO measuring the most important parameters for this type of cultivation:

 

• Soil moisture (installed 30 cm below the ground)
• Soil moisture (installed 2 meters below the ground)
• Leaf moisture
• Air humidity
• Air temperature
• Atmospheric pressure
• Wind direction and speed
• Rain gauge

 

Maintaining an optimal level of moisture in leaves and soil ensures that the vines can adequately absorb nutrients. In an excessively wet leaf, fertilizer is diluted and loses its impact on the crop. It is wasted money and, ultimately, punishes the soil for future harvests.

 

In addition, monitoring the moisture of both soil, air, and leaves is essential in the prevention of fungal diseases in the vineyard. Prolonged humid environments can favor the proliferation of fungi and bacteria, which can result in terrible diseases for the vine, such as mildew, botrytis, or powdery mildew.

BEYOND THE CHALLENGE: ANTICIPATING CLIMATE CHANGE

The combination of Plug & Sense! and farmB allows for the management of critical soil and crop data. The solution provides a complete set of services and applications for collecting, processing, and visualizing information. In a simple and intuitive way, farmB enables the holistic evaluation of information collected in the field from IoT solutions like Libelium Plug & Sense! Smart Agriculture, as well as unmanned aerial vehicles, agricultural machinery, or agricultural robotics, among other technologies. It combines all this data with Artificial Intelligence to provide end-users with precise and concrete answers to potential day-to-day problems in the field.

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