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The Secret Power of Green Light in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
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  I'm your host Dr. Russell Sharp and yesterday
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  we talked about the really powerful signals that were red to far red ratios
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  in plants and how since the advent of LED lights that could give specific wavelengths
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  we've been able to massively modify the way plants grow and And that's where
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  sort of concepts like crop steering have come from.
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  One of the other areas that we need to look at is light quality.
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  And I'm going to talk about green light today because often we sort of,
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  as plant scientists, we used to think of green light as being wasted and useless.
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  But recent advancements have shown that's not the case. And actually,
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  green light can be used by chloroplasts to allow for photosynthesis.
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  And but it's just not as efficient as red light or blue light
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  and so green light is really important
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  for driving photosynthesis further down
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  in the canopy in a natural ecosystem but also further
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  into the crop into the canopy of the crop so it
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  helps boost photosynthesis all around the plant so
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  including some green light for that helps open up the canopy and make sure that
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  stomata are open further in into the plant and so calcium can move around and
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  things like this so green light is important for that the other reason green
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  light is a really useful tool is that it's not sensed by.
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  Phytochrome now these are the pigments i talked about yesterday that that perceive
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  red to far red ratio but also crucially they perceive the day length and the
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  photo period so they're really in many crops the phytochromes are the things
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  that sense whether a plant's going to flower or stay vegetative.
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  So examples of plants that they're very important for are chrysanthemums.
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  Poinsettias, legal cannabis, hops, basil, I don't know, basil's day neutral,
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  what other ones am I thinking of?
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  There's loads of plants that will flower depending on the daylight. But green light,
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  is it passes straight past phytochrome and
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  so it's not perceived so you can so green light
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  is useful in two ways you can
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  drive photosynthesis during the night so you can
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  have green lights on to drive photosynthesis in the night in some crops and
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  also you can have green head torches
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  green led head torches or green leds in
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  your grow room that you can turn on to go and inspect your
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  crop or work in your grow room
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  when it's nighttime and if you've got an extended flowering
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  period and your lights are on for 12 hours of the day and you say
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  they're on during the night because you get better electricity rates from your
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  electricity provider you might want to go during the day because you're not
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  a night owl and you can't be bothered getting up at four o'clock in the morning
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  and so with a green led you can you can go in there during the day safely and
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  inspect your crop. It doesn't work for all crops.
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  Some crops still react to green light, so you have to be careful, do some research.
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  But you'll find green LEDs for sale on a number of hydroponic grow shop websites.
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  They're not as popular as I would expect them to be. If I was growing during
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  the night and taking advantage of cheap electricity, I would definitely be having a green LED.
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  So yeah, i'm not sure why they're not as popular
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  but there you go so it can some
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  plants it can it can uh interfere with
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  daylight perception but blue light also doesn't really
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  interfere with day perception in number of
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  plants you could have a blue and a green light on
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  during the night and you could and for really high value
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  crops where the cost of electricity is not the key point
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  then that's potentially a good one green light also helps open stomata
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  so if you don't have any green lights in your in
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  your grow light spectrum your recipe then potentially you could have closed
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  stomata and that could limit photosynthesis and calcium absorption and transport
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  so that's why a good balance is always good and having and that's why the the
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  cheap and nasty purple lights off ebay tend to not work as well as well as them.
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  Stating a wattage that's not really anywhere
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  near the truth you know the thousand watt ebay grow
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  light is a is a meme amongst hydroponic growers there is
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  one other thing that i didn't talk about when it came to green light i'm trying
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  to think what it is give me a second i'll go through my notes that's it so green
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  light is perceived really well by the human eye and so So it can give you an
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  indicator of how powerful your LED lights are,
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  and so could stop you from staring directly at what is essentially a powerful and dangerous light.
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  Many of grow lights are powerful and dangerous.
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  And without the green, you might just be staring at them thinking,
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  oh, and your pupils will remain wide open, and you'd just be damaging your retinas.
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  So without that green light there to warn you, this is a really powerful light.
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  The other advantage of that is that if you put some green light
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  into the spectrum and make it more whiter you can
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  see pests and diseases whereas if it's just like
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  a purple or a red or a blue then they
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  may be invisible a thrip larva and
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  or a young spider mite are almost
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  if not completely transparent and so you wouldn't see
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  them without a good spectrum and also a hand lens so that's
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  why good and light mixes are also important it's not just about it's not
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  just and your ability to inspect your crop and work in your grow room and green
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  light helps with all of these so that has been the main topic of today's episode
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  i also wanted to raise another issue which.
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  Is not worthy of an episode on its own but i
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  thought i'd mention it because it's really interesting there's an episode there's a article
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  in horsey daily today or this week and
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  it's talking about cocoa and coir a very popular
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  growing media in hydroponics and in horticulture in general and the raw material
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  costs of cocoa have tripled in the last year and that's really important because
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  that's one of the key costs of hydroponics.
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  They're setting up a hydroponic business so trebling of the costs of coir is
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  a that's a scary thought.
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  Two main drivers of that increase one is people
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  want to avoid peat because peat is really bad for the
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  environment obviously it releases CO2 when
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  it's been harvested but also it's harvested from
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  environment very environmentally sensitive and special
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  areas sites of scientific interest and ecosystems
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  so we want to avoid use of pete wherever possible and so
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  people are moving towards it and people are growing more high value
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  crops people want more blueberries more raspberries more strawberries they don't
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  want to just live on a bowl of rice and a few leaves of spinach every day and
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  so people are growing more crops using more coir the world's population is getting
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  bigger more coir is needed also the indian.
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  Chicken industry is now using a lot of coir and
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  so a lot of it is going into poultry farming in india
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  and in other places so this is putting increasing
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  demands on the supply of
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  cocoa and supply and demand economics means that
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  the price will go up and it's trebled in the last year so if
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  you're using cocoa you might need to look at another alternative grow
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  media hopefully a sustainable one and a
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  renewable one and if you need any
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  help with that just give us a shout i'm not a growing media guy but
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  i know some suppliers and i know some facts and
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  so i'm more than happy to give some advice at utreema
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  we're saying we're doing microgreens and we're looking to use reusable
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  grow media for our microgreens so we're
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  avoiding cocoa and koya which is the standard one for microgreens
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  and so watch this space really excited
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  things come in there thank you very much for listening as always
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  my plea to you is if you found any value
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  in this episode then please leave me an apple podcast
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  review don't care about spotify or anywhere else youtube because they don't
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  count towards podcast charts and podcast and apple podcast reviews make me go
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  up the charts really really high your one review will make me go up hydroponics daily will rise about.
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  50 places in the podcast charts. It's mad how powerful it is.
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  Hence the reason I'm always banging on about it at the end of every podcast
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  episode. That's enough for me anyway.
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  Thank you very much for listening. Until tomorrow, goodbye.