IoT technology as a support tool for the calculation of Crop Water Stress Index in a Vitis vinifera L. cv. Chardonnay vineyard in Northern Italy

Nowadays agriculture is one of the main sectors affected by climate change. The continuous increase of temperature and drought periods are posing serious problems in terms of shift of plants’ phenological phases and a reduction of crop yield quantity and quality. Among the indexes used to assess plant water status, the Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) is one of the most studied due to its ease of calculation. We performed a study in a vineyard in Trentino (San Michele all’Adige, Northern Italy) where we took advantage of IoT Technology to build a device to measure leaf temperature and automatically calculate the CWSI. Parameters necessary to determine the CWSI were the temperature of a non-transpiring leaf, (artificial 3D printed black leaf), and the temperature of a fully-transpiring leaf (wet bulb temperature of the air). We compared various types of thermometers to measure temperatures of the real leaves, and with repeated measuring campaigns performed during the summer of 2022 we could obtain spatial maps of CWSI that could highlight the stress levels of the vineyard and therefore address the irrigation management in a context of precision agriculture.