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Biofortify Your Greens: Iodine, Selenium & Hydroponic Nutrition · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello there and welcome back to
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  Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:06
  I'm your host Dr. Russell Sharp and I am the founder of Eutrema Limited and
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  we invented a product called Goldleaf or Liquid Gold as it's called in the UK
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  and it contains every essential nutrient that plants need to grow and thrive.
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  And I said there are some products on the market in a previous episode
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  that claimed to contain 90 elements or 70 elements and
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  i said this was absolute bull poo because
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  you can't do
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  that and not include toxic elements certainly can't even
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  do that and include non-radioactive elements and said
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  that plants only need really 12 nutrients in
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  a fertilizer to grow perfectly well yes they
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  might need a very very small amount of sodium and chlorine but they
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  will get that from the grow media and from the tap water or
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  the water you apply it to you do not need to add any
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  of that and so i always
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  said be wary of that however there are certain nutrients that humans need for
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  optimum health that can be added to crops and food and can be included in food
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  that are not needed for plant growth and And you'll often see that iodine is added to salt,
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  for example, for biofortification.
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  And selenium, in animal feed, you get selenium enriched with yeast, which is bioavailable.
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  And that's needed to prevent a number of diseases in animals, livestock.
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  So biofortification. Now, it's obviously better to add it naturally and let
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  the plant absorb it than it is to add it as an artificial ingredient.
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  So you can actually increase the levels of various micronutrients required in
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  plants by adding them in the hydroponic.
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  Fertigation solution that's one of the beauties of hydroponics is
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  you can add add it directly to the stream to the roots
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  for uptake whereas in soil cultivation you can't really do that
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  now obviously things like iron and other
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  micronutrients might be needed you know i'm
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  trying to think obviously calcium things like this they're very important
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  for human health they're already plant nutrients so they're
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  already going to be in the in the fertilizer solution but
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  you might add more to increase their levels beyond what is optimum
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  for the plants they might be hyperaccumulate it for example
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  but things like iodine and selenium though
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  you can add them you can add a soluble version of them lettuce and
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  basil can be biofortified by adding iodide or
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  iodate forms of the nutrient so various
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  oxidation levels of them so
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  you iodate is
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  io3 and iodide i
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  minus that's all i've got for that so they're added
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  you can you can purchase those and add
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  them to biofortify yield and would provide
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  respectively 22 to 25 percent of the recommended daily dose of iodine if somebody
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  ate 50 grams of iodine iodine biofortified lettuce so a could really help with
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  human health that's really good to know selenium enriched nutritional solutions
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  can raise selenium levels in leafy vegetables.
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  Lettuce and basil, that's been demonstrated, and can also affect quality and
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  shelf life, depending on the dose and the species.
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  You have to be really, really careful though with selenium, because it is toxic
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  to humans in anything other than background levels.
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  So you would only do this if you were a professional horticulturalist who has
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  studied the health effects and the exact levels required.
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  You wouldn't want to mess around with selenium salts, because you could poison
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  yourself or your consumers if you did that.
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  As I said, iron and zinc biofortification, they will be there as fertilizer, but you might add more,
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  Iron and zinc fertilisers you can often buy off the shelf.
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  We have one called Ultimate Iron, and it's got a nice picture of a lawn on it
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  because iron is crucial for lawn health, and so they often add extra iron. So that's important.
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  So iodine, selenium, iron and zinc, they're the main ones that are biofortified.
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  I once talked to a professor at Nassim Trent University, Gareth Cave,
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  and he said that the reason potatoes are not classed as a vegetable in the uk
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  for your five a day what you should healthily consume is because they don't
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  contain enough micronutrients and if they contain more iron then they could
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  potentially be classed as a as a vegetable a stable vegetable that you could
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  include in your five a day for a healthy diet,
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  so selenium iodine non-essential elements that could be good nutrients for a
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  food crop perhaps we should have a version of gold leaf or liquid gold as it's
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  called in uk which have those in.
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  We've thought about it as well for silicon as well, because that's another non-essential
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  element that is good for plant growth, but not essential.
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  But never really got around to many trials looking at that because you
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  can simply add silicon to by adding potassium silicate
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  and the beauty of gold leaf is it brings the ph down whereas normally
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  hydroponic fertilizers the ph would rack up crazy if you
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  added potassium silicate i guess potassium silicate could help the human health
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  as well a crop that was very high in silicon would produce a lot of fiber and
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  more fiber than normal and fiber is going to be one of the key things going
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  into 26 2026 that will be a lot of interest in because more people will be on weight loss drugs,
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  the GLP inhibitor, the Wazwagazi or whatever it's called, Fugazi,
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  the Zempic, and people will start to have issues with digestion and need to
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  increase their fiber content.
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  So there'll be a lot of research about soluble fiber, insoluble fiber,
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  and silicon is a good component along with cellulose of insoluble fiber in the human diet.
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  Silicon often crosslinks cellulose things like pectin as well and makes the
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  cell wall stronger calcium pectate silicon.
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  So yeah some non-essential elements that could help with
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  human health if you added them to a fertigation solution
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  and could be a unique selling point of your crops there's
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  something to look into if you are a grower of an edible crop
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  if you're not growing edible crops of no interest but if
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  you found it useful please do leave an apple podcast review
• 6:17
  for hydroponics daily it would helped me tremendously and
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  if you're not on apple just make sure
• 6:23
  you follow the podcast so you don't miss an episode and while
• 6:26
  you're listening to me ramble on on these podcasts check out utreema.co.uk because
• 6:31
  as i say we've got really amazing products that you won't find anywhere else
• 6:35
  the technology is completely unique we're experts in solubilization technology
• 6:39
  so and then biorational fertilizers okay until tomorrow thank you very much for listening goodbye.