We are proud to announce our InNoVaR Retrofit Kit has been shortlisted for a major international award.

We are among the nominees for the INNOVATION AWARDS at the SITEVI fair in Montpellier. As with the Oscars, the winners will be revealed at the event’s gala dinner on 25 November.

Our retrofit kit, which convert conventional sprayers from fixed to variable dosage, integrates a dual-technology sensor that estimates the presence and volume of vegetation in different areas of the canopy. This sensor, automatically control individual nozzles, spraying, in proportion to the canopy’s leaf volume.

Visit the page dedicated to INNOVAR for all the details

Click here to download the brochure

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• Canopy tracking, approaching and withdrawing speed to/from the bunches and amount of leaves to be removed are customisable. The only machine able to compete with manual processing – as it can be used even when the grapes are ripe.

Click here to download the brochure

Wide working time window

• From the earliest stages to just days before harvesting, the machine will ensure outstanding performance in terms of homogeneous work and gentle handling of the grapes.

Eyelid sensor

• Communicates the exact roller distance from the canopy to the on-board computer.

Leaf stripping rollers

• Their shape and size have been specially designed to remove leaves in amounts proportional to their rotation speed.

Leaf stripping parameters

• In just a few seconds all the machine working parameters can be adjusted. Use the + and – buttons to adjust the leaf stripping power even during work.

Motor-driven rotation fifth wheel

• Smooth, precise right-left rotation, jolt-free on changing gradients. It also accurately adjusts the working head angle with respect to the canopy.

Safety limit switch

• Avoids excessive and unnecessary tilting of the machine.

Leaf stripping rollers reverser

• Ours is the first machine equipped with a button for reversing the direction of rotation to eject waste..

Inlet oil filter

• Guarantees maximum reliability by removing any impurities.

Contact us to request more information on the machine

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“Technical Innovation” Award at EIMA (International Agricultural Machinery Exhibition) in Bologna, Italy

• At the most important contest of technical innovations for agriculture held in Italy, the manufacturer TECNOVICT, based in Pianello Val Tidone (Piacenza), was awarded a prize (its seventh!) for its machine designed to pick and store grapevine leaves – then sold as a by-product to the cosmetics and pharmaceutical industry.

• Special compounds that can be obtained from by-products of the wine industry have become increasingly popular in recent years. There has been a greater focus on research for a more efficient use of these by-products. Various bioactive compounds can be found in spent grape marc and grape seeds. More generally, the value of wine waste can be enhanced by following different strategies, thanks to its chemical characteristics and the presence of a large variety of high added value compounds.
  
  Among the most interesting active ingredients are anthocyanidins; these give wine its colour, astringency, bitterness and partly taste, too. Phenols also play an important role during wine aging. Anthocyanidins are the only cationic group among flavonoids; this makes them unique for their chemical characteristics.

• Anthocyanin is in fact anthocyanidin bound to a sugar. We always refer to anthocyanins and not anthocyanidins, because these are the molecules found in wine. Anthocyanins are known to be responsible for the wide range of colours (from red to yellow) of flowers, fruits and leaves.
  If the extraction of anthocyanins from biomass resulting from wine making would be theoretically possible, in actual fact, these substances would have been degraded by the alcoholic fermentation process they have gone through. Consequently, pure anthocyanins are more effectively extractable from vitis vinifera leaves, especially when their concentration is at its peak, at the end of their production cycle, immediately after the grape harvest.

Final consideration

• Tecnovict was the first in the world to manufacture equipment for picking and recovering grapevine leaves. Financially, this has a huge impact as up to 10 tonnes, the machine manages to reduce harvesting costs by over 50% and its use would already be cost-efficient from about 4 tonnes upwards.
  Probably the most efficient leaf picking technique would be to use the machine for removing the outer leaves and human resources to remove the inner ones.
  This design is yet more proof that agriculture can find new outlets in unexpected applications: in this case, grape leaves picked after grape harvest for use in the pharmaceutical and cosmetics industry as a high-value by-product of one of our most noble and ancient crops.
  Another major achievement for a small-sized company that has turned its focus on research and innovation into a success story – winning this coveted prize for the seventh time, and the sixth in a row: a truly record-breaking result.

Contact us to request more information on the machine

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The sacred respect towards the bunches of nebbiolo destined for these expensive wines has always made us opt for late puffing carried out strictly by hand, but the proverbial delicacy of our machine has ended up unhinging this dogma: respect for the fruit comparable only to that of the hands. has been able to combine the ability to carry out this operation with enormous timeliness.

In light of today’s climate changes, which are often sudden, and careful management of the vineyard, it is essential to have the possibility to react promptly with cutting-edge tools such as this.

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The Vine leaf stripper 111AA is the first tractor-mounted vineyard machine to be implemented by a remote connection module in both Wi-Fi and GPRS technology. It can communicate with the company Wi-Fi network or with a smartphone, being within the range, it can communicate, by means of data telephony in the GSM network, the diagnostics of the electronic parts of the machine to the service center and send the work reports of the equipment at the company server.

The innovation therefore consists in this additional module called “HELP” which can be mounted as an upgrade to existing machines. Inside there is a GPS receiver that has the task of detecting the position and speed of the tractor.

Winner of the award “Mention” at EIMA International 2018

The practical advantages deriving from the two technologies are therefore:

1. Use of an smartphone to check the machine’s macroscopic working parameters on the ground around the machine (within about thirty meters depending on the equipment used) (number of revolving roller rpm, proportional opening of the valve that regulates the aforementioned) roller, tractor speed, and in another page the current absorptions of all the solenoid valves, the correct functioning of sensors and actuators. This feature is designed for technical assistance centers to quickly monitor parameters without having to connect to a tester or a portable PC.
2. Download all reports of the work done daily on the return to the company center where there is a Wi-Fi network. The data to be recorded with the leaf stripper are: punctiform path with relative date, hour, tractor speed and roll rotation speed information.
3. Ability to send the same traceability data of the work performed to the company computer system with frequency to be determined with an integrated GPRS module, thus having the possibility to identify the machine and its work in real time, in an alternative way to data download with Wi- Fi at the end of the day.
4. In case of suspected or obvious anomalies, the tractor driver, by pressing the green HELP key will automatically send the machine operating parameters data to the central technical assistance service of TECNOVICT or to a local distributor who can establish a telephone contact and provide a service remote diagnostic assistance, particularly useful for small anomalies that can be resolved without the intervention of qualified technicians or in any case allowing the intervention of the same on the spot having already identified the source of the problems.

“Help” Module

It does not appear that there are other examples in the world of the production of equipment (excluding tractors) of such an appliance with interactive functionality, which allows on the one hand to help the operator in his activity in case of doubts on the functioning or obvious anomalies, on the other to provide remote control of working parameters to the company center.

Meets the requirements of the “Agriculture 4.0″ directive.

“HELP” Module Brochure

Functional verification report from Turin’s National Research Center (italian version)

Gallery

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This is the first machine in the world created to work on the vineyard canopy at a variable rate

The 111 VRT leaf-stripper has been devised to enable controlled working in the vineyard, not removing leaves in a uniform way, as with all the previous equipment, but controlled depending on the higher or lower presence of vegetation in different parts of the same vineyard. The process we are putting forward uses a telemeasuring system to create index maps of vegetation, to be used as a guide to identify areas for high or medium levels of leaf removal, as well as a total lack of leaf removal for areas with low vegetative vigour.

The electronics on both the SAME DEUTZ FAHR tractor and our equipment use the new ISOBUS communication standard.

It is a revolutionary machine that primarily brings its job closer to the manual one, where the worker (with an expenditure of 40-80 hours/ha against 2-3 hours/ha for the work done mechanically) chooses the leaves to be removed according to the more or less excessive covering of the bunches.

Together with the machine and the tractor with the ISOBUS virtual terminal, there is a supply packet of telemeasured data, index maps and management software.

Developed in collaboration with SAME DEUTZ FAHR (responsible for tractor isobus electronics), who shares the award, and Marchesi Antinori of Florence.

The machine in detail

In the video you can observe the huge difference in work between the different areas, the sounding of the tractor’s horn indicates the passage from high vigour to low vigour.

This machine uses the new ISOBUS electronic communication standard and can be controlled from a tractor already equipped with a virtual monitor, that can be supplied with the SAME tractor, or with the DICKEY-john IntelliAg 10” virtual terminal, distributed by us and which can be applied to any kind of tractor. This terminal is also able to run all the other general ISOBUS applications and particularly the VRT fertilizer spreader, produced by us, with an appreciable lowering of production costs.

The term ISOBUS refers to the ISO 11783 standard “tractors and machinery for agriculture and forestry: serial control and communications data network.” Thanks to the ISOBUS system, a single graphic terminal (defined by the standard as a Virtual Terminal) placed on board the tractor can control all the compatible ISOBUS tools and handle maps at a variable rate, automatically sending the indications of change in dose to the ISOBUS part on the side of the machine, when the machine moves from one area to another with a different prescription.

Our leaf-stripper has been created to remove leaves in a controlled way and to be able to handle the quantity of leaves eliminated according to the actual needs of different areas within the same vineyard.

The prescription maps of the vineyard are created in this way (easily obtainable from vigour maps) expressed in kg of leaves removed per hectare. These maps are managed by the ISOBUS electronics and by appropriate actuators, enabling us to carry out high levels of leaf removal where there is high vigour, moderate leaf removal in the intermediate areas, arriving at a total absence of leaf removal in areas of low vegetative vigour. As the tractor reaches the different prescription areas, recognised according to the geographical position picked up by the GPS antenna, the way the machine works changes, coming closer to how an expert operator would work when manually removing leaves.

In the following images you can see the machine at work. The vineyard has been charted from flight and a vigour map in NDVI (Normalized Differential Vegetation Index) has been reconstructed, from which the prescription map has been made in terms of kg/ha of leaves removed.

It is a georeferenced map where the winery’s technician has indicated the level of leaf removal to be done. Maximum levels of leaf removal have been assigned to the most vigorous area, medium intensity of leaf removal (with respect to the maximum) to the intermediate area, while for the least vigorous area (which normally tends to lose leaves spontaneously during more advanced phenological stages) it was established that there should be no leaf removal.

In the subsequent images you can see the effects of this technique:

This revolutionary technique sees to it that the work of the machine emulates man’s wisdom and enables it to intervene in the vineyard while respecting it at the same time, distinguishing its site-specific needs and treating them individually. This makes it the first machine ever created to work on the canopy, endowed with geographical intelligence.

Technical features

• Working width: 500 mm.
• Requested oil flow: from 35 to 45 l/min at 180 bars
• Weight: 150 kg.
• Hydraulic vertical regulation: 500 mm.
• Hydraulic horizontal regulation: 300 mm.
• Hydraulic trasversal tilt: ± 35°

View the brochure of this machine (pdf format)

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