Start Date: 01/05/2017
End Date: 30/04/2020
Web Site: visca.eu

VISCA is a 3-years R&I project co-funded under the Horizon 2020 programme of the European Union that aims to make the European wine industries resilient to climate changes, minimizing costs and risks through an improvement of the production management (quality and quantity of final product), while evaluating its replicability to other high-added value agriculture sectors. To achieve this objective, VISCA will provide a Climate Service (CS) and a Decision Support System (DSS) that integrates climatic data, phenological, irrigation models, and end-users’ requirements, in order to design medium- and long-term adaptation strategies to climate change. The Climate Service will be able to deliver accurate short- and medium-term weather forecasts – ranging from 48 hours to 10 days. It will also provide seasonal forecasts, climate projections and warnings about extreme weather events.

VISCA will supply well-founded decisions of specific aspects of crop planning (e.g., budburst, harvesting, defoliation, minimum water needs), and suggest preventive actions against extreme events and long-term suitability maps. By combining knowledge of the plant’s growth cycle and climate predictions, wine-growers will be able to apply the best management strategy for their vineyards.

VISCA will be validated by real demonstration with end-users on three demo sites belonging to three wine stakeholders from Spain, Italy and Portugal, which are included as partners in the consortium (Codorniu, Mastroberardino and Symington).