How NASA Technology Can Save California Vineyards By Stopping A Grape Virus Before Symptoms Appear

Vineyards need many things to go right to grow grapes. They need cooperative weather, the right soil mix, ideal watering and to avoid disease. 

Grapes are susceptible to a range of diseases, including the leafroll virus that can devastate vineyards. The virus can hide latent in a grapevine for up to a year, giving it 365 days to infect neighboring plants before showing signs of distress.

To combat this disease and to improve vine health, NASA developed a technology that can spot the virus in its early stages, giving vintners time to address and remove the threat. The NASA research and imaging work focused on grapevine leafroll virus 3 (GLRaV-3) a globally-occuring virus that can disrupt vineyard operations. 

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The breakthrough leafroll virus detection is welcome news for the wine and grape industry, which sustains massive losses each year because of the crop-ruining disease.

The NASA-led technology used infrared spectral images collected from planes flying over California's iconic Central Valley. This involved a spectrometer called Airborne Visible/InfraRed Imaging Spectrometer (AVIRIS-NG) developed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). A research team reviewed approximately 11,000 acres near Lodi, California, using the spectrometer to capture data from hundreds of different channels of light. The different channels produce actionable data about a plant's type and health, including the presence of leafroll disease. 

The technology produced images researchers used to distinguish infected Cabernet Sauvignon grape vines before visible symptoms emerged. This data provides growers with a crucial head start in disease management. The research team combined the imagery with machine learning and on-the-ground analysis, leading to an accuracy rate of nearly 90% in identifying infected plants. 

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The scale and efficiency of the technology contrast with the previous lab-based way of checking for the virus, which required analyzing individual vines through expensive molecular testing. The time spent conducting these tests at any meaningful scale often meant the results came too late and did not prevent vineyard owners from taking meaningful actions beyond vine removal. 

Katie Gold, an assistant professor of grape pathology at Cornell University and a lead researcher on the project, noted the project's transformative importance. 

"This is the first time we've ever shown the ability to do viral disease detection on the airborne scale. The next step is scaling to space," she said.

As NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory sends its airborne imaging instrument AVIRIS-NG into space, the research team hopes data pulled from aerial images and the launched machine could effectively monitor crops worldwide. The technology has the potential to benefit global agriculture by improving yields, reducing pesticide use and improving land usage and quality.  Resource managers could use the technology with agricultural companies and farmers to better plan for crop plantings and rotations to optimize yields and reduce resource usage.

Another wine industry innovation comes from Splash Wines a direct-to-consumer e-commerce wine company that prides itself on exemplary customer service and fast delivery of quality vintages at affordable prices. 

The leafroll virus travels through vineyards via the mealybug. When the virus infects plants, removing them is the only remediation. The virus's impacts result in more than $3 billion in annual losses for the wine and grape industry. 

Gold notes expanding the research project on a massive scale will require satellites because of the costs and feasibility of a massive number of airplane flights. Space would allow researchers to monitor production at a regional community scale because vineyards are a distinctly regional agricultural operation, and efficiency would require monitoring entire areas not just individual vineyards. 

The study focused on red grapes, but researchers are optimistic the results and methodologies can extend to white grapes impacted by the leafroll virus. The NASA-led technology marks the promise of remote sensing in plant pathology, where various stakeholders work together to stop plant diseases before they become uncontrolled problems. 

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