TY - JOUR T1 - Cordon Wire Tension Can Be Used for Static and Dynamic Prediction of Grapevine Yield JF - American Journal of Enology and Viticulture JO - Am. J. Enol. Vitic. DO - 10.5344/ajev.2014.14021 SP - ajev.2014.14021 AU - Julie M. Tarara AU - Bernardo Chaves AU - Luis A. Sanchez AU - Nick K. Dokoozlian Y1 - 2014/08/18 UR - http://www.ajevonline.org/content/early/2014/08/13/ajev.2014.14021.abstract N2 - An automated system was used over the course of three growing seasons to monitor the change in tension (ΔT) in the load-bearing wire of a trellis to estimate yield in vineyards. Actual yield varied nearly four-fold among the three study years, but in each year the fruit was uniformly distributed along the length of the wire. The automated sensor detected sequential harvests up to about 12 m to either side of the sensor, or 24 m total wire length, in a non-linear fashion. Yield was predicted statically from ΔT at the ‘lag phase’ (L) of berry growth (ΔTL), and dynamically from continuous output of ΔT. Relationships between ΔTL and yield were linear. Estimated yield was not sensitive to the date of ΔTL, within 10 d. In using the ratio between the current year’s ΔT and that of a specific previous year, the differences between estimated and observed yields depended upon the choice of predictor year(s), where years with similar ΔT were the most accurate. Across anestimation period of L to harvest, the precision of dynamic estimates was determined by the similarity in the day-to-day shapes of the double-logistic curves of ΔT over time. Due to a catastrophic frost in the second year of the study, an extremely small crop and an uncharacteristic growth curve made it difficult to predict yield either statically or dynamically. In practice, the method requires a grower to collect multiple years of growth curves from which to build a robust linear relationship between ΔTL and yield (static estimates) or to apply an average of multiple years’ ΔT values dynamically. ER -