Written by Jennifer Phillips-Russo
The Lake Erie Regional Grape Program team has been extremely busy this harvest with Spotted Lanternfly Spray Trials, Spotted Lanternfly surveys with New York State Department of Ag and Markets’ inspectors, and just this week, we found ourselves driving to the Long Island and Hudson Valley grape growing regions to install Cornell NEWA weather stations through a New York Wine and Grape Foundation grant. Grape growers in Lake Erie, Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley, and Long Island face the risk each season of their vineyards being attacked by insects and diseases whose severity is dependent on the current season’s weather conditions. This results in growers needing to modify their vineyard IPM strategy on a yearly, monthly, and sometimes daily basis. Research-based IPM practices have been developed and modeled for grape pests on the Network for Environment and Weather Applications (NEWA) website. One of the objectives of the grant this year was to increase effective areas with the installation of Kestrel (Rainwise)/Onset weather instruments purchased from this grant to expand and upgrade the NEWA network in our Lake Erie, Finger Lakes, Hudson Valley, and Long Island regions. We installed two new stations in Long Island and two in the Hudson Valley grape growing regions.
“Generously funded by the NY Wine & Grape Foundation, these stations will be a tremendous help to vineyard managers who need to keep tabs on rainfall, leaf wetness, wind direction/speed, and temperatures. The site also hosts disease and insect prediction models. The two stations complement the new Hobo station at LIHREC in Riverhead. Kimberly was a tremendous help to the CCE staff, who tagged along as she demonstrated proper installation as well as how to troubleshoot the stations. Many thanks to Jenn and Kim for making the trek to Long Island and to the Foundation for sponsoring this effort.” - Alice Wise, AG Program Director / Viticulture Research, CCE Suffolk County
Lake Erie Regional Grape Program personnel, Kim Knappenberger and Jennifer Phillips-Russo, install a weather station that will be part of the NEWA network with local CCE staff
Jeremy Schuster, Viticulture Extension Specialist for CCE Eastern New York, “geeking out” over the new weather station
Photo credits: Jennifer Phillips-Russo and Alice Wise