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Develop Fungal Disease Early Warning Systems for Proactive Management

Fungal diseases cause massive losses in wine production but current management relies on reactive treatments after infection occurs rather than predictive prevention. The challenge is developing early warning systems that can predict disease outbreaks days or weeks in advance, enabling proactive management that prevents infection rather than treating established disease. This requires integrating weather data, pathogen monitoring, host susceptibility, and predictive modeling to forecast disease pressure. Current disease management is largely calendar-based or relies on visible symptoms that appear after significant damage has occurred. Technical barriers include understanding complex disease-environment interactions, developing reliable forecasting models, and creating actionable warning systems for diverse vineyard conditions. Success would reduce fungicide use through precision timing, prevent crop losses through early intervention, lower production costs, reduce environmental impact, and provide disease forecasting approaches applicable to other crop systems facing similar pathogen pressure and the need for sustainable disease management strategies.

Applied Sciences, Specialized Agriculture, Viticulture & Enology