but laura goodwin has been to see a new piece of tech that could take vertical farming to the next level. a warm, sunny day like today is a gift for farmers, who very much rely on the climate and their own expertise to ensure their plants are healthy and happy. but what if they could control the climate? and what if they found a way that the plants could tell the farmer what they needed? one agritech company, gardin, thinks they've worked out how to do exactly this. well, what do we have here? one of our partner vertical farm facilities where we've installed our sensors. wow, look at all this! and it smells incredible. chillies on this side. got chillies here. we have some flowers down here — edible flowers. some strawberries. there's 25 trays high here, growing a number of species.

and all of this is being monitored by the gardin sensors here, which are mounted on the mobile platform. so our sensors are able to monitor this whole environment — they move around. and what they're looking at is particular leaves. we're able to use optoelectronics, which is smart physics, to understand how the leaf is performing. it works by combining the images it collects with machine learning, which has been trained on lots of pictures of plants at various stages of growth. this allows the system to monitor how well the process of photosynthesis is working in each plant, and this tells them how efficiently they're growing. so we're really talking to the plants, and they're telling us how happy they are. and we're able to then feed that back to growers and able to tell them which crops are performing the best. and then we can understand why that might be with the environment around it. i love that you're breaking it down to talking to plants

because a lot of people do that in their own greenhouses. this is on a much higher tech level. and explain, why is it so important, particularly in a vertical farm, that you can do that? the beauty of vertical farming is really that you have this really fine—grain control. and what we want to be able to do with our sensor is to say this is the current status of your plant and what you should do is slightly change the variables in the environment to make that plant perform better, which will result in more food. but it's notjust more food. gardin says they're actually trying to make food better, full stop. we've all gone and bought very red, round tomatoes from the supermarkets, brought them back home and been thoroughly disappointed when we've had them. the problem today is that the way that we measure the value of food, the quality of food is wrong because, you know, when we look at two tomatoes today, the way that people in industry decide which one's a better tomato is by looking at how red it is or how round it is. and absolutely nothing about... did it come from a healthy plant or not? by measuring the health of the plant, you naturally end up

with a better tomato. but working out how to make the best tasting food means a lot of experimenting. so one of the big projects we've been working on with igs is around optimising basil growth. so we all love basil for that kind of italian pizza flavour. so we're looking at how can you actually control different wavelengths of light to make basil taste even better and have the tastiest basil you've ever had? you can actually look at those characteristics and say these particular signals will look like a basil that will taste and smell really strong. so which one do you think will taste the best, and should we try it? i think this guy is looking pretty good up here. yeah? right, let's give it a go. have you had enough, basil? we've eaten a fair amount of basil, yeah. i'm going to give it a try. it's very flavourful. in many ways, though, this tech isn't that new. there's a lot of technology can do something fairly similar, - but it takes a lot of that technology and it's not i very cost—effective.

so the beauty of this particular i sensor is that it can really help us drive down the cost of the overall sensor loads, focus _ in on the important aspects, but in a very controlled, - very precise way. and most importantly, i a very cost—effective way. bringing together and improving camera technology, integrating machine learning, then applying it to agriculture is certainly an innovative step from gardin, but vertical farming is still in its relative infancy, and it will be interesting to see whether this will provide enough growth for the company in the near future. laura, there. and aren't vertical farms just amazing? i love them. i love the pink—ness personally. but not everything can be grown inside. these grapes, maybe. but most grapes are grown in vineyards, which are outside. yeah. and the problem is that climate change is starting to affect how those grapes are growing. so paul carter has been to bordeaux to meet one company that's trying to help vineyards to keep cool. wine. we've been consuming and producing it for hundreds of years.

throughout that time, the methods have remained almost unchanged, despite evolving into an industry worth over $300 billion worldwide. but now, tradition and technology are merging to help growers combat new challenges. two vineyards in france's world—famous winemaking region of bordeaux are among those at the forefront of change. chateau haut—bailly and chateau pape de clement have both been making wine in this area since at least the 1500s and are two different growers united in bringing technology into viticulture, with the aim of tackling a very modern problem — climate change. with climate change, what we see is we have hotter climates, we have more extreme rain patterns, so it means drought and then a lot of rain and then drought, a lot of rain, etc, which means that

during these periods where we have hot weather and water, the disease pressure is very, very high. it's at levels we've never seen before. we are trying to adapt our vineyard to the climate change first, so the material — rootstock, grape variety, leafage — everything, we try to adjust to get the best of it. but we also get to work with new technologies. one such technology both vineyards have been adopting is from a company called deep planet, an agritech start—up using al to inform decision making. in winemaking. we use satellite imageryl and artificial intelligence, or machine learning, to help wine growers make better decisions. so, we help them predict| yield, understand when is the right time to harvest. holistically, we are providing a full stack solution - for the wine industry, - to help them reduce costs as well as to improve the quality of wine. l

so obviously there's a lot of data that's coming into this system from a variety of different sources. how do we get that? how does the system make that into something that's perhaps more understandable to someone like me that's looking at this? yeah, so we incorporate different technologies. in addition to satellite imagery, we also use aland machine learning. effectively, we're using a whole pool of data that we have from existing growers. we have more than 40,000 hectares under our platform, and we use a combination of our existing pool of data as well as a new pool of data. it uses machine learning processes to analyse the crops and identify areas that might require attention. we can better understand what's happening for sure. we have a lot of... ..a big database about all the climate data since i've been working here, since 20 years. we have all this data, we have all the data about the yields, about the concentration in sugar of all the grapes. artificial intelligence

here will help us to predict and to forecast what will happen for the next vintage. but why does this matter? and what sort of impact can changing weather have on the quality of the end product? right. shall we... shall we give it a taste? of course! so, this 2011, this is slightly different from the 2015 and 2016 in terms of the conditions. i chose 11 because, for me, at the moment, it's the vintage that looks like more what we are living now. 2022 started very early. we had the early de—budding, some frost in april, but then it was the amazing, exceptional warm in may, and it and the drought we have now injuly are exceptional. and in my memory, i've been working here since 20 years, it looks like what happened at the beginning of the season of '11. this is really another stage. it's a very mature wine.

the tannins are getting softer and it's fresh. but with the evolution of the...aroma of the ageing in the bottle. that's my favourite. of course, it's... to drink now, this is the best. but in terms of potential, '16 is much higher. winemaking as an industry has developed over centuries, so while technology can be an aid, some growers say it can never be a replacement for knowledge and expertise. we are working...on other ways to grow this crop, . which is already very different - from ten years ago or 15 years ago, to build more resilience - into the system and make our vineyards less prone to drought, stress, to diseases, etc, etc. - and then there is the technology i side, which is going to help usi to make the right decision. standing out here amongst the vines, it's clear to see the scale of the wine production industry here in this particular part of france.

and i've seen today that climate change is proving a real problem for this industry. the challenge will be whether the technologies that they're implementing here will be enough to react quick enough to help them adapt as we move into the future. that was paul on the wine and that is it from the three of us on the farm. i'll leave you to work out who has commanded the highest fee for today. this is the short version of click. the full—length version is, of course, waiting for you on iplayer. meanwhile, we have to get someone back to her trailer, she is very demanding. thanks for watching. bye— bye. hello. it is hot and it is dry and for some

parts of the uk it feels like it has been hot and dry now for a very extended period of time. if you're looking forward to something cooler, monday and tuesday will be the days when we finally see fresher air pushing into all parts of the uk. if you're looking for something wetter, well, many areas are because it's been the best part of a month and half for some since they've seen meaningful rain — the water table is struggling. its arrival is going to be more sporadic. extreme heat will continue to be the story across england and wales — the amber area highlighted behind me until the end of sunday. and then, for the beginning of the new week, we start to introduce some relatively cooler air, but the temperatures don't dive off — they kind of taper off. into the small hours of sunday, the chance of a few showers towards the south—west, some for northern ireland. very warm across england and wales, high teens, even low 20s through the small hours, the lower end of double figures for scotland, and we will see cloud returning to the east coast and mist and murk to the coast of the north—east of england.

that will burn off through sunday morning. the showers further west, however, will start to pick up a pace, i think. some thunderstorms to the north of northern ireland working into western scotland and surging their way north. isolated showers perhaps for wales and the south—west, but nothing too significant in the way of rain out of those. cooler where we get the showers, though, across scotland and northern ireland. still looking at mid—30s widely across england and wales, though, on sunday, possibly 36 in the south—east of england. now, by monday, low pressure is trying to take hold across the uk. it's trying to pull in cooler, fresher air from the atlantic. however, it's not a cleanjob. we will see some showers across eastern england, but they're likely to be hit and miss — many areas still staying dry and hot here. further west, a greater chance of showers, and it looks like a change in wind direction will also mean we finally start to see temperatures shifting closer to the average values for the time of year. but it's a tapering off, as i said, not really a plunge. by tuesday, low pressure to the south of the uk looks like it will mean we get some showers

eventually getting across into eastern england, and it looks like we'll see some of those around on wednesday as well. if we take a look at the outlook for the week ahead, what you can see is that, for all areas, temperatures start to sit much closer to the average values for the time of year — the heat gone by the time we get to tuesday.

this is bbc news with the latest headlines for viewers in the uk and around the world. the suspect in the stabbing of the author salman rushdie has pleaded not guilty to attempted murder and assault. the 75—year—old is now on a ventilator, with the nerves in one arm severed, and may lose an eye. people are still in shock over what happened. you know, the guy has a price on his head from 1989, of all the places he might be attacked, or hurt or god forbid die, this would be the last place i would think of. also in the programme.... the ravaging effects of climate change — we report from france where exhausted firecrews have spent weeks battling wildfires.