Modeling of the Water Footprint in the Viticulture in the Brazilian Serra Gaúcha

Abstract

The theme of this work is the water footprint in the Brazilian wine agroindustry, particularly in the state of Rio Grande do Sul. A tailor-made code was developed in Scilab language, which allowed the calculation of evapotranspiration of a viticulture, taking into account the Penman-Monteith model. This model was fed with climatic and rainfall data collected at climatological stations in the mountainous region of Rio Grande do Sul (called Serra Gaúcha), related to the incidence of sunlight, climate, wind speed, soil characteristics, and crop characteristics. From the application of this modeling, it can be concluded that (i) on average, in theory, between 1991 and 2021, the volume of rainfall in the region under study met the demand for crop evapotranspiration, so that there was no need for artificial irrigation (at least to compensate globally for evapotranspiration); (ii) the volume of evapotranspirated water per hectare per year, in the region under study, was 5,684,300 liters of water; (iii) comparing the results of the water footprint of wine produced in Serra Gaúcha, which were 496, 595 and 744 L per 750 mL bottle (for three different harvests), with the water footprint of wine from countries such as South Africa (647 L/bottle), Portugal (515 and 753 L/bottle, for two different cases), New Zealand (682 and 605 L/bottle, for two different regions) and Italy (632 L/bottle), it was found that wine production in the Serra Gaúcha, among the contexts studied, shows a tendency for values of water footprint compatible with the largest wine-producing regions in the world.