Transcript for Patty Skinkis

I'm Dr.Patty Skinkis, viticulture extension specialist,

and an assistant professor in the Department

of Horticulture at Oregon State University.

One of the goals that I have

is to work closely with the industry

and really determine their goals.

And one of their goals has been

increasing fruit quality and

decreasing vine vegetative vigor

and cost of production.

But still maintaining a high quality product.

I have several different projects currently

going as on-farm trials here in Oregon.

Largely to meet the needs of the industry.

And there is one central common theme

amongst that group of projects that I'm doing.

And that's canopy management and

vigor reduction. So I started a couple

projects to try to manage that

vigor and try to reduce it and

reduce cost for growers but also to

not reduce the quality of fruit.

One of which is using alleyway

vegetation management. So managing

the alleyways between vine rows with grasses.

So almost as a cover crop.

How do you manage that space to

reduce vine vigor?

Another component also of canopy management

and vigor management is looking at

manipulations in the cluster zone of the canopy.

So we actually go in and remove leaves

in the cluster zone. And what we do is

we try to increase that cluster exposure

to reduce disease and to potentially

increase fruit quality. So it's a

very common practice in Oregon vineyards,

but we're trying to go in and modify how

it's being done to get more benefits

in disease reduction. But also

to allow for reduced pesticide use

because as we open up this cluster zone

and people are going through and spraying

their vineyards, we're able to get better spray

coverage on those clusters and potentially

get lower use of pesticides but also to

allow for lower diseases.