DRIED GRAPE NEWS
Year in review
News from our field officer 2020 was a different year for all of us and our Hort Innovation-funded extension project had to join the global shift to being flexible and innovative. If anybody had suggested to me 18 months ago that we would have groups of dried grape growers running meetings and engaging in seminars and field days from their homes through online video conferencing, I would have had to reference great Australian film literature and simply say, “tell him he’s dreaming”. But I was so wrong.
12 VINE MAGAZINE
In the beginning, we created informative videos and put them online for growers and other interested people to watch. These included the final stages of the minimal pruning demonstration at Ashley Johnstone’s, where the video showed that the demonstration rows were mechanically cut and harvested without any issues arising from the lack of rolling on. I was also able to put together a video to introduce DFA’s 10 Tonne Project. With the first three videos having a combined 600 views on YouTube, I had to finally concede that this was a good idea – much to the amusement of the younger staff at DFA!
The next leap of faith was into online video conferencing. With the help of the team at Agriculture Victoria and our own Stephen Bennett, our first online workshop involved learning about the capabilities of the IrriSAT program, which uses free online NDVI imagery to track and predict vine irrigation requirements. That seemed to work even better than sharing a video online, so now we were off and running with online delivery. What followed was a wide range of online interactive seminars and events on topics including: - new varieties - 2020 harvest information from our processors
