We’re glad to be joining the Wine Industry Network, and we’re looking forward to introducing FloraPulse to more of the winegrowing community.
FloraPulse measures stem water potential continuously, directly inside the vine, so growers and vineyard managers can see vine water status through the day and across the whole season.
What we do
Stem water potential is the most trusted measure of vine water stress we have. Getting it has always meant someone walking the block with a pressure chamber at solar noon, and what you get back is a single snapshot from a single moment.
FloraPulse automates that measurement.
Our microtensiometer sensor is a chip about five millimeters square, embedded directly into the trunk. It reads stem water potential every 20 minutes, day and night, without anyone in the vineyard. Each vine gets two probes for redundancy, so you’re not trusting a single reading.
The technology came out of Cornell University, where our co-founders developed it before starting FloraPulse in 2016. One of them, Dr. Alan Lakso, spent forty years as a grapevine physiologist at Cornell and still advises our growers today.
How we do it
Each system sends its readings to our platform automatically over cellular. Vineyard teams see current vine stress, season-long trends, block-to-block comparisons, and how vines actually respond to irrigation, heat and changing conditions.
That answers the questions that matter during the season:
When should we irrigate, and for how long?
Did the vines actually respond?
Are we holding the level of stress we’re aiming for?
How fast are the vines recovering after a heat event?
Soil moisture and ET both tell you about the vine’s environment. FloraPulse tells you about the vine. It’s a different input to the same decision, and it’s the one the fruit responds to.
The accuracy is published and independent.
In a trial at Italy’s Laimburg Research Centre, FloraPulse tracked the pressure chamber at an R² of 0.968 in Sauvignon Blanc and Chardonnay. (Haas et al., 2025, presented at GiESCO)
Who we work with
FloraPulse sensors are in the ground in more than 35 countries and 15 crop types. In wine grapes, that means vineyards across Napa Valley, Sonoma and Paso Robles, estates in Europe including some of the world’s best known names, and growers served through our partners in Australia and New Zealand.
The varieties, soils, climates and irrigation strategies are different everywhere. The question is the same one in every block.
What is the vine experiencing right now?
That’s the question FloraPulse was built to answer.
We’re looking forward to sharing vineyard data, research and real-world irrigation examples with the WIN community, and to learning from the growers, vineyard managers, viticulturists, winemakers and researchers here.
Plants tell a better story.
Learn more at FloraPulse.com.