There are approximately 30,000 acres of vineyard in the Lake Erie region of New York and Pennsylvania grown on 840 farms, making this the largest grape growing region outside of California.

Of this acreage, 98.5% consists of Labrusca (American Grape) varieties such as 'Concord' and 'Niagara' which are used for juice, jam and other fresh or fermented products. The Lake Erie Regional Grape Program consists of Extension Educators and research faculty/staff from Cornell University and Penn State University devoted to projects aimed at increasing yields, product quality, diversity and improvement of cultivars, efficiency of production, profitability and adoption of environmentally sound cultural and pest management strategies.

 

 

 

Loaner Sensor Program

The loaner sensor program is an outreach program designed to introduce interested growers to the technology developed by the Efficient Vineyard researchers. It involves a technician from the Lake Erie Regional Grape Program coming out to the farm to install or attach scanners and computers to existing equipment. The subsequent data collection is then completed during normal activity such as pesticide spraying. Once the data is collected it can be sent back to researchers to generate a prescription map. The DualEM soil sensor requires a technician to operate so if you would like to have a soil scan done of your vineyard, please contact the Portland, NY Cornell Extension office and make an appointment.

https://efficientvineyard.com/loaner-sensor-program

LERGP Podcasts- check them out!

http://lergp.com/podcasts/