Montevitis: precision viticulture

The Montevitis Project is financed by European funds - Horizon Europe Twinning Action. The institution leading it is the University of Donja Gorica (UDG), a university based in the capital of Montenegro. 

Relationship with the various partners 🤝

Montevitis has several partners, including UDG, CITAB/UTAD, PIK - Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (Germany), UNIFI - University of Florence (Italy), LIST - Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology, Sociedade Portuguesa de Inovação (SPI), as a consultant to help the project with its dissemination, image and documentation, and IHMS - Hydrometeorological and Seismological Institute of Montenegro.

In addition to these institutions, Montenegro's producers - such as Rajkovic Rade (RAJ), Buk Winery (BUK), Milovic Vinarija Kruna - Ulcinj (KRU) and Vinjarija Vucinic Zenta (ZNT) - are essential partners. They play an important role in this study of climate change, presenting the challenges to be overcome and information gathered in the field and the winery. This includes the dates of the phenological phases, when budbreak, budding, fruit formation and grape ripening are taking place. In addition to phenology, they have also shared data on grape production and quality. The producers in Montenegro are recording this data to be able to compare and observe what is happening in the country (Montenegro). In this way, it is possible to obtain data to calibrate models for the production and quality of the grapes that are produced and the phenology itself. 

Montevitis' goals📌

On the research side, the project's primary objective is to support viticulture in Montenegro and throughout Europe. In this way, what is being done in Montenegro can be applied in Portugal.

Another of the project's objectives is to support the UDG in collaborating on future projects - this is important in the twinning dynamic, where you're trying to help a university and give it more tools on the research side.

CITAB/UTAD: the right choice 🏅

Other projects, such as Clim4Vitis, which took place in Portugal, have a very similar dynamic to Montevitis, except that it was CITAB/UTAD (Portugal) that was leading the project. 

With the experience gained, António Fernandes, a researcher at CITAB, emphasises that: "We are a valuable partnership, as CITAB/UTAD led a similar project (Clim4Vitis), in the person of Prof João Santos as coordinator. Our experience has been valid and important."

There is a very strong research component to the project, which is investigating climate change in viticulture, based on climatic, phenological and modelling studies. There is also an institutional component, geared more towards twinning - various workshops and webinars have been held to disseminate knowledge and tools to the university. 

Innovation at the centre

The most innovative part of this project is working with Montenegro, as there are very few studies on the impacts of climate change on viticulture in the region. "Within the project, the members of MONTEIVITS were the first to write a paper along these lines. CITAB/UTAD could be a pioneer in this field," praised António Fernandes.

A decision support platform is also being developed for the project. This platform is compiling a series of climate data developed by the Potsdam Research Institute and UTAD. Phenology and production records are also being stored. This is pioneering data, as no such data has ever been published and it represents a strong contribution to Science. 

Challenges ahead 

The main challenge is precisely to collect phenology and production data, as there is no published data of this kind for the region's grape varieties.

Given that the data being collected is that of the project - the problem arises that in order to carry out the phenology and production modelling, observed data is always needed to calibrate the model. How is this done? Observed data is entered, such as the year and quantity of production, with the associated climatic conditions. The model then tries to replicate this situation for new climatic conditions in future scenarios. However, this requires several years of phenological data.

The CITAB researcher concludes with one certainty: the team is being innovative in the way it tackles this problem. Although it's an obstacle, it's something that also supports future research, as this represents the beginning of the data collection task and it needs to be continued, possibly in future projects. A lot of data is needed to fulfil these modulation and calibration tasks.