Downy, powdery mildew and botrytis risk assessment by climate parameters,pest and spores monitoring in Rioja Alavesa vineyard (Northwest of Spain)

Abstract: The integrated production Regulation for grapevine in the Basque Country waspublished in 2004 (BOPV 221/2004, official bulletin). A previous 3-year study was carried out toevaluate the real situation of growers to assume this regulation in their exploitations. Severaldeficiencies were reported, including technical and management aspects. This work is focused inRioja Alavesa, an area with 12,869ha of vineyard in the Northwest of Spain producing81,325,000 wine grape kilo. Integrated disease control interest is rising, although the number offungicides applications in the last two years against downy mildew and other fungal diseasesreached up to 12 treatments, being usual 5 or 6 per season. These data prompted us to implementthe strategy of fungal disease control. We installed 12 monitoring weather stations in differenttrials, according to different environment and geographical characteristics. The stations wereequipped with sensors of temperature, relative humidity, leaf wetness, soil temperature, radiationsensors, rain gauge, and an anemometer. Registered data can be discharged and recuperated frominternet, at the same time that the risk assessment for downy and powdery mildew and botrytisdiseases. In parallel, one sticky glass trap to capture spores by impact was installed near eachstation and two more traps in each field. Pheromone traps to capture Lobesia botrana were alsodistributed in the fields close to the spore traps, as the abundance of this insect gives an idea ofthe possible future botrytis damages and spread. After these assays we would be able to validatethe stations for each studied zone and assure that the risk assessment made by climate parametersfollows a real model, taking into account the disease incidence in the field as well as the sporeand vector populations.