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ZAP is dedicated to advancing public knowledge of and appreciation for American Zinfandel and its unique place in our culture and history. You know how good your Zinfandel is... GALLO VICE PRESIDENT SEES OPPORTUNITY IN MACHINE PRUNING D r. Nick Dokoozlian, vice president of viticulture, chemistry and enology at E. & J. Gallo Winery in Modesto, Calif., discussed during the Unified Wine & Grape Symposium session in January not just efforts to mechanize vineyard opera- tions but the company's trials to analyze how it affects grape and wine quality. He said mechanization offers a tremen- dous opportunity, but from his perspective as a plant physiologist it should be ex- panded with a systems-based approach. "I don't think we've ever sat down and taken an integrated, systems approach to how we mechanize a vineyard," he said. "We've generally taken existing trellising systems, existing training systems and built a ma- chine to fit those as opposed to starting from scratch and asking ourselves: How would we really design a vineyard for full mechanization?" The one area where Dokoozlian saw the most opportunity for the expanded use of mechanization is pruning, but he said there are challenges. "One of the problems with mechanical pruning in California in particular is that it was really initiated in warm regions in low-return vineyards," he said. "Vineyards that already had econom- ic distress or disease, pest problems or something that made them not desirable to farm in the traditional manner." He said the returns were so low, growers just went in and switched over to the box hedge method to further reduce costs. The result was lots of dead wood, matted fruit and leaves and poor fruit exposure that resulted in a decline in quality. Dokoozlian said it was a more a matter of the ap- proach failing rather than the method. Viewing the change to mechanical prun- ing from a more integrated perspective resulted in switching to a hire-wire system of 66-inch to 68-inch-high cordons with a single wire. Hand pruning for the first three years resulted in the best spur posi- tions for mechanical pruning in the fourth or fifth year. "I don't want to leave you with the idea you just put up a box hedge and you prune it with a machine and then you farm it just the way you do everything else, because nothing could be further from the truth," he said. Mechanically pruned canopies can have three to five times more buds pushing shorter shoots with smaller leaves. The vines will achieve a full canopy sooner in the year, meaning it will be relatively older throughout the rest of the growing season, and that will require adjustments to when the vines are watered and fertilized. Dokoozlian said he envisions pruning, harvesting and other mechanical opera- tions will only improve as the technology improves. Better sensors, robotics and automated machines will reduce costs and labor needs but also improve wine and grape quality. "Really a systems approach is going to be essential. That's our next big thing is really integrating design, plant materials, training systems all this stuff to think about what we want to mechanize and really develop that with the idea of mechanization instead of bringing the machine in after we've done everything and expecting the machine to work," he said. "That's a huge opportu- nity for us both in research and commer- cialization." labor supply is going and what wages we're having to pay in the Lodi area," he said. Suckering taller vines remains a challenge because such work needs to take place during the spring, when there's competition from other crops. Lange said "tall vines" could be a solution: They are mostly rootstock that was de-budded in the nursery. "That makes a lot of sense to us that we're not having suckers push- ing all over the place." He said he still needs to see how these vines perform over the long term, but he's encour- aged by what he's seen so far. While there have been major advancements in mechanical harvesting and on-board sorting, Lange noted such harvesters do work rather well in a vertically shoot positioned vineyard, with meticulously leaf-pulled vines and picking at a rate of 5 tons per hour. "In Lodi we need these machines to handle 6 tons to the acre to 12 tons to the acre, and we need to keep our speed up," he said. "I have not seen one of these units really do an effec- tive job at removing all that MOG while keep- ing the ground speed up and handling that type of volume." He said his team is currently working on modifying some existing machines to get quality at higher speeds with the added goal of reduc- ing harvester teams from five workers to three.