An expert system for vineyard management based upon pervasive computertechnologies

Determining the optimal maturity level for performing viticulture operations and harvesting activities is adifficult task, because, depending on the variety, the climatic conditions and cultural practices, thephenologic maturation process occurs at different times. Recently, ubiquitous computing technologiesallow an extremely precise and cost effective monitoring of environmental conditions by means of anRFID based sensor networks. The implementation of such technologies in vineyard management isnowadays under development, however, besides the possibility of gathering data, the need is perceivedof developing decision support tools to fully exploit the potential opportunities of these newtechnologies. The present research aims at establishing a suitable method to support the decisionprocess with the environmental data gathered automatically by a sensor network. The paper reports theresults of an experimental study on a Sicilian vineyard showing that by means of the data collected byan RFID infrastructure it is possible to forecast the occurrence of phenologic maturity stage.