Project Overview
Commodities
- Fruits: grapes
Practices
- Crop Production: conservation tillage, cover crops, fertilizers, no-till, nutrient cycling, organic fertilizers
- Education and Training: on-farm/ranch research, participatory research
- Natural Resources/Environment: biodiversity, carbon sequestration, indicators, soil stabilization
- Production Systems: agroecosystems
- Soil Management: composting, earthworms, green manures, nutrient mineralization, organic matter, soil analysis, soil chemistry, soil microbiology, soil physics, soil quality/health
Abstract:
In recent meetings, growers have expressed a strong interest in understanding soil health for wine grape production systems. The problem is that we currently lack a comprehensive framework to assess soil health for the semi-arid Mediterranean soils of the western U.S. This problem is more challenging for the California wine grape production industry not only due to its large soil diversity but to this crop’s unique management practices and goals. Therefore, soil health for California vineyards might have a different definition and sustainable management requirements compared to other crops (Lazcano et al. 2020).
Therefore, we aim to 1) develop a definition of soil health for wine grape vineyards that meets the unique growers’ production goals, and 2) assess diverse soil health indicators in vineyards across the Napa Valley region.
With the collaboration of growers, this study will help us improve and do targeted sustainable recommendations for conserving soils while helping growers achieve their production goals. We expect to observe trends of soil health indicators among soil types and sustainable management practices.
Project objectives:
The objectives of this project were:
- To develop a definition of soil health for wine grape vineyards that meets the unique production goals.
- To assess the variability of diverse soil health indicators in vineyards across the Napa Valley region.
The outreach objectives of this project were:
- To integrate growers' collaboration and participation in defining and assessing soil health for such unique crops as wine grapes.
- To provide several informational talks for growers and develop short farmer-friendly articles (i.e. factsheets) communicating about the importance of soil health, the role of the soil organic matter and soil microbial ecology in soil health, and the main findings of our project.