# A Smart and Sustainable Future for Viticulture Is Rooted in Soil: How to Face Cu Toxicity
## 2 Current Challenges
### Smart Viticulture  
Cu accumulation in soil can be restrained through direct (e.g., using more resistant plant species, as described in the previous paragraph) and indirect actions (e.g., decreasing the availability in the rhizosphere and/or limiting the quantity of Cu that reaches the soil via new applications). Since the resistant varieties of vine plants currently available are essentially tolerant, and therefore a certain level of plant defense using pesticides is essential, indirect actions are still important not only for the traditional varieties, but also for the new ones. In this respect, the main goal is to avoid drift phenomena during the application of pesticides and to limit Cu accumulation in the soil. The Cu applied to the vine canopy will indeed reach the soil due to rain, foliar irrigation and/or autumn leaf fall. In the last two decades, a wide range of technologies have been increasingly applied in viculture, such as monitoring technologies, decision support systems and operating technologies. **Monitoring technologies** include geolocation, remote sensing (using satellites, aircrafts, and unmanned aerial vehicle/drone images), and proximal sensing during production (using wireless sensor networks to measure soil moisture, leaf wetness, grape temperature, sap flow, etc.) and harvesting phases (using volumetric grape sensors and optical sensors for grape \"quality\"). **Decision support systems** (DSS) make it possible to consider the spatial variability (i.e., the variability of soil properties, landscape features, crop stresses, yield and quality in the different areas of a field [120]) in process optimization (irrigation, fertilization, or chemical treatments) and harvesting. Finally, operating technologies include **variable-rate technologies (VRT)** and **agricultural robots**, which make it possible to implement the activities defined with the help of the DSS, while also limiting drift phenomena [121]. These technologies were proposed in the 1990s, initially for their ability to manage crops according to site-specific logic, which makes it possible to deal with the spatial variability of soil, nutrient and phytosanitary conditions. They also include geo-referencing, which allows producers to micro-manage soil and plant processes within small areas of a single field. Despite positive expectations, these techniques' diffusion is still relatively limited, as several authors have reported [122; 123; 124; 125]. In several European countries, the use of ITC in agriculture remains at less than 10% of farms, and, of these, only 50% of farms that complete site-specific applications. The current circumstances are considered to be very favorable for the growth of the sector, not only for the new generation, with habits more rooted in the use of digital technologies, but also for the \"cultural dragging\" caused by the so-called \"Industry 4.0\" revolution [126; 127; 128]. In fact, this revolution has brought significant attention to the new technological frontiers connected to the \"Internet of Things\" (IoT), Big Data, Cloud Computing, hyper-connectivity, cybernetics and augmented reality. As a consequence of this technological trend and its effects, the terms _agriculture 4.0_ and _smart agriculture_ are coming to be preferred to the term _precision agriculture_[129]. To the best of our knowledge, there are no studies measuring the exact impact of precision or smart viticulture techniques on the limitation of Cu accumulation/toxicityat the soil level. However, various papers have highlighted that the goal of these techniques is to improve not only the yield and quality of grape production, but also its environmental sustainability (i.e., reducing the chemical treatments) [120; 130]. Indeed, these techniques have shown that it is possible to reduce the use of Cu-based fungicides by 25-50% [131; 132; 133]. Therefore, it can be expected that the contribution to the limitation of Cu accumulation/toxicity at the soil level will be remarkable.