Intriguing bit on UV light for mildew control

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Yea I remember this article. If I have to employ robots to treat my vines then I’d say it’s time to embrace hybrids, lol.

On a more serious note if one is that deadset on a variety would it not be cheaper to erect a large warehouse type building with polycarbonate panels or something?

I seriously doubt this tech is affordable or viable since grapes themselves are photosensitive life forms it will do way more harm than good.
 
So should we hide from it or not?

https://news.cornell.edu/stories/2020/06/robots-armed-uv-light-fight-grape-mildew
Has anyone tried this at scale? Interested to hear any experience...

I think that this could be an incredible breakthrough! This could reduce the use of pesticides in viticulture drastically.
I just hope that this concept will get market ready and won't be bought by some big chemistry company just to be dropped afterwards ;-) Still, I see a certain danger, that after some time, new mutations of fungi will pop up that are resistant to UV-light...
Would be interesting to know if the results can be replicated with common UV-Lamps. If yes, it might be even applied at small scale...

Yea I remember this article. If I have to employ robots to treat my vines then I’d say it’s time to embrace hybrids, lol.

On a more serious note if one is that deadset on a variety would it not be cheaper to erect a large warehouse type building with polycarbonate panels or something?

I seriously doubt this tech is affordable or viable since grapes themselves are photosensitive life forms it will do way more harm than good.
I totally disagree. 99,9% percent of world's wine production is made from vitis vinifera varieties, which are all very sensitive to fungal diseases. Today's solution is to spray pesticides every few weeks, which is certainly not very ecological and certainly more expensive than electricity for a UV-lamp.

A greenhouse wouldn't be a solution at all, besides the enormous construction costs (we are talking about hectares) it would need to be sealed airtight and equipped with high performance filters to get fungal spores out of the air, which is just not possible.
 
Uv-c has a detrimental effect on grapes which manifest with very little exposure.
 
One technology that while still in its infancy is being developed for vineyards is electrostatic disinfection which imo is much more viable but one would still have to wait on it to get cheaper tho.
 
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