Knowing when to irrigate crops and how much water to apply is something horticulturalists have battled with for years.
But technology that detects whether a plant is water-stressed up to a week before it starts to wilt could change that.
In south-west New South Wales, Duxton Vineyards just installed 14 sensors developed by Athena IR-Tech.
The devices are attached to poles and sit directly above the vine canopy.
Duxton Vineyards environmental manager Dylan Klingbiel said the cameras monitored the behaviour of the leaf pores.
"What it's doing is giving us a measure of how stressed the vine is and translates it back to a water index," he said.
"It puts that into an algorithm that can give you and indication of when you need to water and how much water needs to be applied to keep it at an optimal range."
When a vine is stressed its leaves start to wilt, but Mr Klingbiel expects this technology to provide a much earlier indication of when water is needed.
"There's talks of it being seven days prior to actually seeing that vine stress, so that's another exciting feature," he said.
"We can [increase] our irrigation volumes to keep the vine in that optimal range."
The technology is expected to do more than just to create water efficiency gains.
"Vineyards in South Australia have seen some really good yield benefits and an increase in some of the key wine quality parametres like anthocyanins and tannins," Mr Klingbiel said.
"So, quite exciting that you can potentially save water and increase the quality of your grape output as well."
Risk reduction and sustainability
Development for the technology started about a decade ago at Cornell University in the United States before designers Vinay Pagay and Fran Doerflinger moved to Australia and continued their work at the University of Adelaide.
The federal government and Wine Australia supported behind the project and the technology was put to commercial use 18 months ago.
It is now being used in 41 vineyards in Australia and New Zealand.
Athena-IR Tech chief executive Jay Holata said the technology was set up for cabernet sauvignon and shiraz grapes, but there were plans to include other grape varieties and horticulture crops.
"The solution works on any irrigated crop, but to add new crops or new grape varieties we need to follow the new crop so information can be added to the algorithm," he said.
"We have 10 grape varieties as well as almonds, valencia oranges, navel oranges and imperial mandarines that we will be offering up after this season."
Dave Gerner from Wine Australia said agricultural technology was becoming increasingly important part for grape growers as they worked to become more sustainable.
He said the technology also helped to optimise workflows, yields and quality, as well as reducing the risk growers faced as tried to turn a profit.
