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Karrikins and Seed Germination · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hello and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily, your go-to podcast for everything soilless cultivation.
• 0:07
  A bit of a strange day today at Utreema HQ.
• 0:10
  We've found it more and more that most of our sales are coming from non-horticultural.
• 0:16
  Customers, obscure industrial end uses of our products, which is strange because
• 0:21
  this year we've really put an effort into marketing.
• 0:23
  I mean, I've been doing a podcast every day for Hydroponics and
• 0:26
  yet Hydroponics is on its knees in the uk at
• 0:29
  the moment but even things like lawn care and stuff it's taking
• 0:32
  a back seat because the high temperatures so water treatment
• 0:35
  all sorts of crazy products we've been looking
• 0:39
  at so but we're going to crack on with hydroponics anyway
• 0:42
  because it's a passion for everyone who works at utreema and we
• 0:46
  had some interesting inquiries today one of
• 0:49
  our customers james he was saying that
• 0:51
  he'd been listening to the podcast and he'd been struggling to
• 0:54
  work out the difference between salicylic acid and silica
• 0:58
  and this is he's not alone there lots of
• 1:01
  customers this is a big issue for because we sell
• 1:04
  two products and they're not fertilizers and
• 1:08
  so people often get confused because the name sounds
• 1:11
  similar silicon and silica and silicon
• 1:15
  are about cell wall strength making the plant
• 1:17
  physically harder and able to resist environmental stresses
• 1:21
  salicylic acid is just eliciting plant defense mechanisms so it's like activating
• 1:29
  plant defense mechanisms that's how it works and with with that also comes like
• 1:34
  secondary metabolism flavor enhancement and things like that so i always i put
• 1:38
  the analogy that it's like.
• 1:40
  Salicylic acid is to silica what cats are to cars they're completely different
• 1:46
  they just sound very similar.
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  So if you learn English for the first time, you might get cat and car mixed up all the time.
• 1:53
  And if you're not an absolute chemist whiz, then you might get salicylic acid
• 1:59
  and silica mixed up just because they sound similar.
• 2:02
  Think of silica as sand making the plant physically
• 2:05
  hard okay so that's how we look at it second thing that's been going on today
• 2:09
  is really struggling to get hold of mineral wool slabs in one meter in the uk
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  so rock wool things like that if anyone knows anyone at grodan can you bang
• 2:20
  their head against a brick wall because i've been trying to get hold of grodan and.
• 2:26
  Saint germain or whatever the other company is that makes them i can't get hold
• 2:30
  of one meter rock wall slabs for love nor money i've even put an order in with
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  a grow shop who just took my money and said well you'll get it when we can get
• 2:37
  it seems that no distributors can get hold of them,
• 2:40
  grow down i'm not responding to any of my emails this seems
• 2:44
  to be a theme at the moment in hydroponics i went to green tech
• 2:47
  got loads of interesting flyers and business cards from
• 2:50
  interesting companies and said send me details about
• 2:52
  your technology and no one bothered to reply maybe one
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  cocoa company and just thinking you spent all
• 2:59
  that money exhibiting it green tech tens
• 3:02
  of thousands of pounds at least like it's not a cheap show and then you don't
• 3:06
  even bother to follow up with leads it's bonkers so yeah i just need some one
• 3:12
  meter rock wall slabs to set up our nft system i'm willing to pay money for
• 3:16
  them yeah so today's subject on hydropont dairies is caracans,
• 3:21
  which are chemicals that promote the germination of seeds.
• 3:25
  I said I was going to be the next podcast about this two days ago,
• 3:28
  and then I got sidetracked by my hydroponics toolkit that I've created.
• 3:33
  But I'm going to do it today.
• 3:34
  Before we get into the meat of the podcast episode, though, we've got to ask the general public.
• 3:41
  Do they know what hydroponics means? And today, it's Harry from Warrington.
• 3:46
  Does Harry from Warrington know what hydroponics means?
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  Let's find out what is hydroponics i
• 3:52
  don't know i guess like something to
• 3:55
  water and plants i'll probably give harry
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  five out of ten for that really enthusiastic answer
• 4:02
  let's get on to the subject of today's episode
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  and that is carakins which are a class
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  of chemical they're strictly classed as
• 4:11
  a plant growth regulator and they're found
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  in the smoke of burning
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  plant material and they stimulate seed germination really well and plant development
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  because they mimic a hormone in plants called strigolactone and I've not talked
• 4:27
  about strigolactone yet but they're hormones that help with they're also involved
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  in the use in the symbiotic relationship with mycorrhizal fungi.
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  And they're involved in branching a lot of branching like cytokinins a bit like
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  cytokinins involved in branching.
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  So they were discovered in, I think it was in 2004. So very,
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  very late as far as plant hormone analysis goes that.
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  And they were actually discovered in plants called fire followers.
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  And I think it's mainly in the Southern Hemisphere, Australia,
• 5:02
  South Africa, and places like that, where there's seeds of certain plants that
• 5:05
  just will not germinate unless they're given a smoke treatment.
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  So it's been known for a while that smoke helps these plants germinate,
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  but it was actually until 2004 that they actually isolated one of these caracans
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  and were able to look at its chemical structure.
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  And so any plant material that's burnt under the right conditions will produce caracans.
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  And as I say, there's certain plants in
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  the finboss flora of South Africa
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  and the bush of australia that
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  just won't germinate without them the absolute requirement most
• 5:39
  seeds they just need water heat and
• 5:42
  oxygen to germinate maybe some plants require light like lettuce these were
• 5:47
  an absolute requirement and so you found that these plants have an absolute
• 5:51
  requirement but what's also interesting is that seeds of a number other plant
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  families will also respond to carrican signaling and will improve their germination.
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  So tomato, lettuce, many tree species.
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  And so you can use carricans to promote germination. If you're struggling to
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  get your seeds to germinate, especially if they've got low vigour,
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  so they're not germinating very fast or.
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  They're on the edge of viability then really have
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  a look at giving them a treatment of caricans now
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  how can you do this can you buy caricans can you make
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  caricans and the answer to that is to both of those questions is
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  yes you can buy filter paper that
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  is infused with carican rich smoke
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  for germinating seeds but you
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  can also buy liquid smoke and liquid
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  smoke is used on barbecues and
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  used for by biography enthusiasts for you
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  know producing smoky flavors and that actually contains caricans
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  and you can you could put some liquid smoke there's a
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  brand called colgan in some water and that
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  would improve germination and it's not
• 7:00
  just germination rates that it's
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  improved it's also found in the model plant species of
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  Arabidopsis that caricans reduce the
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  height of the hypocotyl and increase the
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  size of the cotyledon so basically your seed.
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  Leaves get bigger and the stem which you want to keep as small as
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  possible to prevent your seeds from getting leggy is actually
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  reduced so a double win there for
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  caracans so definitely something to look at if you're struggling
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  for germination and again in that model plant species Arabidopsis
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  they found genes that are responsible
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  for the signaling of caracans and so it's definitely
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  not just a thing where it's just adding a fertilizer it's
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  having a mild effect there's actually a genetic key lock and key type response
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  of the plants to this treatment with carikins six different carikins have been
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  discovered and they are k-a-r-1 or car one two three four five six.
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  And how many did i say,
• 8:02
  trying to find it here, yeah, six carricans, but the first four are the main, most active ones.
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  It'd be interesting to know if they have effects other than just on germination,
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  because we said that these strigolactone hormones, they're also involved in signaling with.
• 8:20
  Mycorrhizae, and they also have an effect on branching.
• 8:24
  So could you apply strigolactins to improve branching and improve the ability
• 8:29
  for plants to form our mycorrhizal connections.
• 8:33
  I'll do a bit of research into that and get back to you.
• 8:36
  And I'll talk more about stricolactones in a future episode.
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  They're quite an interesting one because they're first isolated from a parasitic
• 8:45
  plant that attacks cotton plants.
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  So that's quite unusual. The Asiatic witchweed.
• 8:54
  And so yeah, let's talk about that in another episode though today
• 8:57
  we talked about caricans let's get some anyone got
• 9:00
  any liquid smoke let me know send me a sample we can test
• 9:03
  it on various seeds and and if you've got a hydroponic plant
• 9:06
  see if that has ever been tested search
• 9:09
  for that one and see if it's ever been tested for caricans if
• 9:13
  you have been sent this episode because you struggle with
• 9:16
  germination and the person sent it you thought
• 9:19
  that you might be interested in trying caricans then
• 9:22
  you owe that person a really good
• 9:26
  birthday present or christmas present next time because you've
• 9:28
  just they've just massively improved your ability
• 9:32
  to germinate seeds and if you
• 9:35
  like to share this with anybody just click the share button on your podcast
• 9:39
  provider and send it to as many different growers of seeds and different hydroponic
• 9:44
  crops as you know and help grow the hydroponics daily listenership that would
• 9:49
  be fantastic thank you very much for listening and until tomorrow that's been
• 9:53
  hydroponics daily goodbye.