An expert system for vineyard management based upon pervasive computer technologies

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