News in brief - New Zealand producers could save billions of litres of water a year if they irrigated based on needs of vines
New Zealand wine producers could save billions of litres of water a year if they started to irrigate their vines depending on how much water they actually need.
Viticulturist Mark Karasnow has been experimenting with vines and discovered than they actually need around half the water they currently receive via irrigation. Not only that but the grapes seemed to thrive in these conditions.
This is good news for producers having to deal with increasing incidences of drought as climate change takes a hold.
Karasnow has calculated that Marlborough growers could save between 137,000 and 660,00 litres of water per hectare if they started to consider irrigation based on the actual requirement of the vines.
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