Concours SIVAL Innovation, L'ESA présente VIT'LCA

Vit’LCA is the first online software for calculating the environmental impacts of viticulture-specific practices using the Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) method. LCA quantifies the gains obtained in terms of environmental footprint in most environmental compartments. In winegrowing, it factors in the contributions of all the inputs and materials used throughout their life cycle and the substances emitted into the environment. Users can thus easily identify and compare the eco-efficiency of winegrowing practices or technical itineraries from their field data, and assess the advantages of improvement solutions. The results shed light on a large number of environmental criteria, like the contribution to global warming and ecotoxicity for aquatic organisms. Vit’LCA makes this complex, powerful and comprehensive method available to advisors, teachers, students and winegrowing practitioners in the field. As the user chooses, it takes into account the planting phase, the first years of the vineyard, the production phase, and the end of the vine’s life. A single scenario is assessed to understand the causes of impacts, or several scenarios are compared to identify and evaluate ways to improve.

In interaction with the field, Vit’LCA was developed by LCA and winegrowing researchers from the USC GRAPPE research unit (ESA-INRAE) at the Ecole Supérieure des Agricultures in Angers, France and the University of Queensland in Brisbane, Australia, with support from the Loire Region’s agri-food innovation programme (RFI Food for Tomorrow – CapAliment). A maturation programme carried by SATT Ouest Valorisation is working on its transition from Excel to an online platform, to make it more accessible to users.