Amaya Atucha, associate professor and fruit crop extension specialist in plant and agroecosystem sciences, received $300,000 for her project ColdSnap: An online bud cold hardiness prediction tool to assist grapevine management decisions through NIFA’s AFRI Critical Agriculture Research and Extension program. It was among 24 projects sharing $7.1 million in funding.

Project summary (from CRIS website): Extreme and erratic weather events, consequence of climate change, results in substantial cold damage to grapevines and extensive economic losses to rural grape growing areas in the Midwest and Northeastern U.S. Current methods for monitoring fluctuations in bud cold hardiness are a time-consuming and require specialized and expensive equipment. The goal of this project is to develop an online tool for grape growers that uses recently developed models to estimate bud cold hardiness throughout the dormant period from temperature data available through a wide weather network. This information will assist growers in cultivar and site selection for vineyard establishment, as well as making time sensitive decisions to protect grapevines from winter injury in established vineyards, thus minimizing crop and vine losses and increasing the long-term sustainability of the grape and wine industries in the Midwestern and eastern states. This project addresses AFRI’s program priorities “Plant health and production and plant products” and “Agriculture Systems and Technology”. This project proposes to enhance the economic sustainability of the Midwest and Northeast U.S. grape industry by minimizing crop and vine losses due to cold damage through: 1) validating and expanding two newly developed bud cold hardiness prediction models through analysis of regionally diverse data collected in the New York, Wisconsin, South Dakota, Minnesota, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Iowa, and Quebec, 2) implementing model programming and development of the “ColdSnap Grape Bud Hardiness Model”, producing a stakeholder accessibility-minded online tool that leverages customized climate data hosted by the Network for Environment and Weather Applications, and 3) developing educational resources for growers and provide extension-led outreach efforts to facilitate information dissemination and implementation.