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Seed Sterilization in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Well, howdy, y'all. Welcome back to Hydroponics Daily.
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  And why am I doing that crazy accent? It's because the North American audience
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  for Hydroponics Daily is now beating the European audience.
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  We're getting more listeners in North America.
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  So thank you very much for listening, guys, over on the pond.
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  As I say, Goldleaf is a product that we manufacture in the United States of
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  America, and it was invented in the United Kingdom.
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  So great to have you all listening. today we're talking
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  about seed sterilization so last yesterday
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  we talked about quarantine and how that was important for cuttings and
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  seed sterilization i think should be used more
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  often for hydroponic growers and that's because we
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  know here that a lot of the people selling seeds
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  into hydroponics have actually got a lot of problems with
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  pest diseases weeds nematodes things like
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  that so it's best not to trust the
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  seed suppliers now you know some people
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  you might say you know completely trust them i've seen the facilities but
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  if you've not seen their facilities and they're a small grower you know
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  a lot of them they themselves talk about the struggle against things
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  like mildew so i would always sterilize my seeds the
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  added advantage of seed sterilization is that it
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  also helps with scarification so if you're growing a crop that
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  struggles to germinate quickly then you
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  can also many of the same methods that sterilize a
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  seed also scarify it break up the seed coat
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  either physically or chemically and so
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  that's great so sterilization is
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  good for fungal diseases nematodes as i mentioned viruses
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  it's one of the great ways of of of getting viruses
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  off obviously if the virus is inside the seed you're
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  not going to be able to do anything about that so unfortunately
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  that's not going to be a method it's only for the surface so the
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  first method is an acid scarification and
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  obviously if you're treating the plants that's treating the seeds with acid.
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  This will sterilize everything because acid is a great.
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  Biocide and it will scarify break down the seed coat you
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  have to be careful a dilute solution do a quick
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  google work out what the best acid is what the best dilution rate
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  is a lot of the ph down that you find you
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  might be using already could be used as a
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  an acid scarification and this will work well for viruses another method that
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  is less hazardous and if you don't have any ph down around if you're using gold
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  leaf or liquid gold as it's called in the uk you you won't have ph up and ph
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  down because it's ph perfect so you could just dunk the seeds in hot water and.
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  Before you sow them. This is also good because it aids germination.
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  And hot water, about 60 degrees Celsius, will kill nematodes.
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  It's enough to kill nematodes, it's enough to kill fungus, and it can even,
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  if you heat the tissue up to 60 degrees Celsius very, very quickly for a short
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  period of time, it can actually help with controlling virus in the seed.
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  And actually there's been some
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  studies done that if you quickly treat a seedling to 42 degrees Celsius,
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  which is far too hot for it to be kept in that condition but
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  just like a like for an half an
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  hour or so you can actually get good control of viruses by doing that
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  so if you had a mother plant or some cuttings that
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  were infected with something like hop latent virus
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  or hop mosaic virus and you
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  didn't want to get rid of them because they were such a rare genotype or
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  phenotype you could flash treat them at 42 degrees
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  celsius and with seeds again you could go up to
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  60 degrees c with a with a seed treatment you could
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  never do that with a plant because it would die if you got it to 60 degree c
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  you just wouldn't be able to survive other ways
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  of sterilization include ethanol and ethanol
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  has been shown to actually stimulate germination in beans and as well as cleaning
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  it ethanol's a great sterilizer but obviously you don't want to do that for
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  too long because ethanol is toxic to plants in prolonged after prolonged exposure
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  plants and fungi produce ethanol when they are respiring.
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  Anaerobically and so when flooded roots they die off
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  because when you keep your plants too waterlogged because they
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  produce ethanol and the ethanol is toxic so if you
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  are going to sterilize your seeds with ethanol do it quickly and
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  do it for a short period of time and then wash the ethanol off there
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  used to be reports in old books of fermenting seeds could
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  aid their germination as well but that's that's pretty
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  much nonsense i think it's fermentation is only going to stimulate rotting
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  diseases on the seedlings so i wouldn't do that there
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  are reports that boiling water treatment improves
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  the germination rate of parsley that's a bit bro sciency and studies have shown
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  that that's not actually true and that boiling water is not optimum and lower
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  temperatures is better for parsley parsley and things like parsnips they have
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  very poor germination rates.
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  Parsley, you have to get the right one as well because sometimes the seeds are
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  grouped together, I think, as well.
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  So a 60 degree Celsius treatment for sterilization is also good and promotes
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  germination in canna lily.
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  That's canna lily and also alstroemeria, any of these lovely summertime flowers.
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  Ultrasound will have a sterilization effect and also promote germination,
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  get water through the seed coat.
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  And there's also a lot of research on plasma treatment of seeds.
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  I talked in the past about nanobubbles and how nanobubbles are the.
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  The cool technology that loads of companies are turning up with in hydroponics at the moment.
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  Plasma treatment of seeds is another one that can promote yield and sterilization
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  of seeds and things like that.
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  UV light is another one where there's loads of companies researching UV light
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  treatment of seeds and some really big claims about UV light and how it affects
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  the yield, massive yield increases for generation after generation of plants,
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  these sorts of epigenetic effects but on a
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  base level uv treatment of seeds is great for just sterilizing them
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  so if you've got a uv treatment uv lamp you
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  could perhaps do that and then you just like physical sandpaper
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  you know cleaning the seeds and and that will scarify them as well and improve
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  the germination by breaking down that seed coat so that's been seed sterilization
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  i did talk in the last episode about how peroxide i think i probably misspoke
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  there i wouldn't really use peroxide to seed sterilize.
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  Having done a bit more background research on this episode from my notes,
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  I think I'd go down one of the other methods.
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  I'd use hot water and a very, very mild acid if possible. So that's been Hydroponics Daily for today.
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  Oh, one last thing. Many of the
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  UK listeners will be shouting at me for spelling sterilization with a Z.
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  There is this urban myth in the UK that words like sterilization should be spelt
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  with an S and it's American to spell them with a Z.
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  It's just not true if you look at the oxford english dictionary
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  sterilization will be spelt with a z so stick that in your pipe and smoke it
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  if you like this episode please share it and give it a like give it a review
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  give it can give it whatever review you would like a four star a five star a
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  three star please don't give it a one star or two star until tomorrow thank you very much.