About G D Rural

Technology
G D Rural / IPV researches, emerging technologies, scientific advances, technological developments on a regular basis to determine the level of integration and benefit they have on the industry - some current technologies are:

Soil Mineralogy and the effects on wine quality See page 8 "A toast to soil
mineralogy"

Solusampler - from SARDI / SENTEK - to determine nutrients in soil solution "In the root zone"....more info....

Remote Sensing as a tool in optimizing probe / sensor location... check Page 32... for further information contact us.

Our Service Zone

We can provide various services to the grape growing regions of South Australia.

The service level & types of service will depend on the grower’s location, the 3 main types of service include :

A Full Spectral Imaging (min block area 15 ha - min zone area 500 ha), EM 38 (no minimum), Training and Info courses quarterly

B Full Spectral Imaging (min block area 15 ha - min zone area 1000 ha), EM 38 (10ha + setup), Training and Info courses annually

C Full Spectral Imaging (min block area 15 ha - min zone area 1000 ha), EM 38 (20ha + setup), Training and Info courses TBA

The Service level relates to time and method ;

1 Email & Phone 24hr, Site visit 2 days
2 Email & Phone 24hr, Site visit 7 days
3 Email & Phone 24-48, Site visit TBA

The Yellow Zone (Red Towns)- Service Type A, Service Level 1
The Light Yellow Zone (Green Towns)- Service Type B, Service Level 2
Other Zone - Service Type C, Service Level 3

The Zone within the Green Line also has the option for Commercial UHF coverage - for more information contact us.

System Integration

Based in the Southern Vales grape growing region, G D Rural's main service areas are the McLaren Vale, Fleurieu Peninsula, Southern Adelaide hills and Langhorne Creek zones.

Our core business is providing Precision Viticulture (PV) services including :

Services:

Spectral Imaging – helps highlight variation in crops and in developing and planning various management strategies

EM38 surveys – helps growers in planning and vineyard establishment or redevelopment

Training – in the use of software associated with precision viticulture

Products:

Moisture Probes- we now can supply and install the Sentek range of moisture probes.

Software – which helps in implementing, monitoring and controlling all aspects of PV incl. GIS & GPS

Hardware – associated with handheld Pocket PCs and UMPC incl. GPS, barcode scanners and video cards

Screens & Displays – for use with vineyard machinery, visual GIS guidance and remote cameras

Telemetry systems – including remote controls for pumps, valves and generators

Communication – for the supply and installation of commercial UHF systems

The basis for all viticulture ventures is the land, using this as a base layer for the integration process ensures a stable platform for future planning and management strategies.

We are not Agronomists or Viticulturists. To enable growers to get the very best from the information, we highly recommend that they use their existing consultants or alternatively we can suggest suitable local viticulturists.

Using this approach ensures each group specialises in their core business.

Two starting points

For the new development -

In this case we recommend the EM38 RTK survey, this will give the grower detailed information of:

Possible soil boundaries (EM38)
Slope - Help determine aspect, plan irrigation and drainage
Elevation - Important in calculating pipe sizes, TDH and suitable varieties
Aspect - Plan irrigation sections, block boundaries and varieties
Accurate geographical information - this is critical to determine exact areas for planting and headlands, and distance for planning trenching requirements, pipelines and vineyard materials (e.g. wire, drip-line and cable)

For existing developments -

We recommend the EM38 RTK survey in conjunction with the DMSI (Digital Multi-spectral Image), however for the budget conscious the DMSI is a great starting point to highlight variability and problem areas in you vineyard.

The cost triangle

As with most things the better the quality the higher the cost. In this case we are referring to the data.

In vineyards the optimum target is to produce consistent, high quality crops on a annual basis. The key part of the process is to determine a start point and constantly refine and finetune the vineyard to reach the end target.