Within the framework of the DATI project, various experiments are being conducted by Yulin Zhang, a PhD student at UMR ITAP, on the Domaine du Chapitre in order to characterize vine water stress using observation data such as the Apex index, which can be calculated directly from the ApeX Vigne application.

Another objective of these experiments is to have an idea of the Available water capacity (AWC) of the soil using these free and easy to obtain observations. To do this, an approach based on inversion of the water balance model will be implemented in order to calculate AWC from the observations made on Apex application.

To implement this approach and to know the “real” AWC, soil pits were opened on the plots studied during the previous growing season. These pits make it possible to observe the soil structure, but above all to take samples in order to quantify indicators such as apparent density, percentage of coarse elements, characteristic moisture at field capacity and at the permanent wilting point. From these indicators, we will be able to evaluate the performance of the water balance model inversion. We hope to be able to recalculate the AWC from the observation data on the ApeX Vigne application.