There are many good practices that are applied to the Brolio vineyard in order to create an increasingly sustainable and environmentally friendly agriculture. The use of new technologies can also make an important contribution towards these goals, as its technical director Massimiliano Biagi explained to us.

In 2020, a 4.0 tractor which can help optimize the process of fertilization was purchased in Brolio. Thanks to an intelligent system, the machine can read so-called “health maps”, which are obtained from photos of the vineyards taken by drones. These maps show the less healthy areas that are most in need of fertilizers. The tractor software can interpret this information and distribute the required amount of fertilizer for each parcel accordingly. This means that the process is greatly optimized, considerably reducing the amount of fertilizer used. This also helps to ensure that the health of all the vineyards is maintained.

Another example of technology for sustainability comes the Decision Support Systems (DSS). In the Brolio vineyards there are many meteorological stations that support the use of forecasting models for vineyard diseases. Our system is managed in collaboration with an innovation from the University of Piacenza which includes a very rich database as well as the software necessary to analyze the large amount of data collected. This data includes temperature, humidity, rainfall, and leaf wetness. It is possible to predict with great precision which areas of the vineyards are at risk of fungal diseases and to limit the use of treatments only to the places where they are really needed, which means there is a significant reduction in pesticide treatments during the season.