Somehow this summer has gone by amazingly fast. I’ve reached the halfway point in my internship, which also means I’m halfway done with these blogs! It’s crazy how fast its all gone but you know what people say “Time flies when you’re having fun”.
These past couple of days have honestly been a little crazy and I’ve got to learn so much more in such a short time. Just this last week the Research and Extension Center, in collaboration with the Rogue Valley Winegrowers Association, hosted its annual Southern Oregon Wine Grape Field Day. We got to go to various vineyards throughout Southern Oregon and learn about how they run their vineyards and why they do what they do. Our first stop was Troon Vineyard, which is an organic and biodynamic farm/vineyard. Biodynamic farming is sort of a relatively new concept, in which the farm or vineyard is viewed as a single entity. The requirements for biodynamic farming are actually quite interesting. Some requirements include, using natural materials, soils, and compost to sustain the vineyard, having other plants and animals onsite such as ducks, horses, or sheep live on the soil and fertilize it. Other requirements include the forbidden use of chemical fertilizers and pesticides. The purpose of biodynamic farming is to create a more natural, self-sustaining farm that can continue on for many generations. The second vineyard we visited was Hummingbird estate which is a relatively new vineyard, so we discussed new plantings, as well as cultivar and rootstock selection.
Our last stop of the day was here at the Research and Extension center where we visited all of our research vineyards here on site. After lunch, we had an amazing talk from Glenn McGourty about “Evaluation of Vineyards, Fruit and Wine Affected by Wild Fire Smoke”.
The rest of the week consisted of PCR and DNA extractions, but most importantly Nutritional Analysis results! After sampling and sending off results a couple weeks ago I have received ⅔ of the lab results, so a big portion of my week was figuring out a way to present the data. After a lot of research and R Studio stuff I came up with these plots as a first draft at presenting the data.
I’m still working on them and trying to figure out if there might be a better way to present the data while also waiting on the results from OSU. I will also be sampling again here in a couple weeks and sending off those samples. Overall things have been picking up and with berry and cluster sampling coming up, there’s gonna be a lot more things to do… hopefully.
