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Sea Urchin Biostimulants: A New Trend for 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, the owner of Utrema Limited.
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  We make a variety of fertilizers and biostimulants and today's topic is a biostimulant
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  but it's not one that we manufacture here at Utrema.
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  That's because we're talking about biostimulants made
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  from dun dun dun sea urchins which
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  is has i had a couple of news articles about
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  it in the press so i thought i'd talk about it because these might
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  be being sold to hydroponic growers soon so sea
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  urchins those sort of spiky things that live
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  in the sea they're actually herbivores and
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  they eat kelp and this is a problem in
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  norway where there are kelp forests and
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  they can eat up all the kelp and obviously
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  this is an imbalance caused by overpopulation of the predators of the sea it's
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  a overpopulation and lack of lack of predators for the sea urchins probably
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  due to fishing and the human consumption of the kelp and human harvesting of
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  the kelp as well which would normally.
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  The sea urchins would normally feast on so the the
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  kelp itself is a is a is a big
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  crop for norway and they make
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  it into a biostimulant they make seaweed extract
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  with it but now they're looking to also make biostimulants from
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  the sea urchins that feed on the kelp
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  so and then hopefully reduce the
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  sea urchin numbers to the point where the kelp can thrive again so
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  dr johansen of the
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  NIBIO Department of
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  Biomarine Resources Valorization is
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  looking into this and they've run a number of studies and they've
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  grown I think lettuce but
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  perhaps Arabidopsis it's looking
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  like some sort of rosette forming plant.
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  Let me see if I haven't done my research properly anyway they yeah
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  lettuce plants and they've shown a couple
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  of diagrams showing the growth of the biostimulants and it's
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  highly variable and they're saying but the
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  problem is is that the growth response is
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  it's marginal and they've compared that
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  to a lower dose rate
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  of seaweed extract on the same lettuce plants and the
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  seaweed extract is far superior
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  at promoting plant growth than the seaweed extract
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  biostimulant so yes you're producing
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  a biostimulant from a waste or a problem and
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  you know circular economy and all those sorts of things but at the end of the
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  day you could get far better growth from one tenth of the application of a seaweed
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  extract so i don't think that this sea urchin biostimulant is going to take
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  off i can understand where they're coming from.
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  They're trying to get rid of a problem. They've got a lot of biomass that they're
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  looking to have a high value output for.
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  Someone's mentioned biostimulants to them, probably someone who works in the
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  seaweed industry anyway, but I don't think this one's going to fly.
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  Also, sea urchins are animals. And so let me just check that out.
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  Are the animals? They must be animals.
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  Yeah. Although they don't look like, you know, they've got legs or anything like that.
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  And they're spiny yeah so they're not
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  vegetarian or vegan this biostimulant compared
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  to seaweed extract which is so I don't think it's got legs this one excuse the
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  pun but I think people are going to stick with seaweed extracts like the seaweed
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  extracts that e-tremor produce a lot of the seaweed extracts around the world
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  come from Norway ours comes from Scotland and so.
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  Less you know air miles on our products and
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  we produce a cold processed product whereas a lot
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  of the product that comes from norway is heat extracted alkaline extracted
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  and some of the biochemicals are degraded when
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  they're produced so we think we've got a better product well everyone who
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  makes seaweed extracts thinks they've got a better product if you
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  think there is a gap in the market for
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  a seaweed sea urchin biostimulant then
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  let me know could there be something in sea
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  urchins that one particular crop needs more
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  than say other crops maybe the lettuce wasn't the best crop to
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  try it on sea urchins as an invertebrate will
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  contain a small amount of chitin so that could
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  have a biosimilar effect however they're not very high
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  in chitin so it's not like an exoskeleton of
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  a mollusk or a not mollusk a crustacean
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  like a crab or a lobster or a
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  fungus containing chitin it's mainly a background it's.
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  Not a primary component of the of the shell
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  or the spines that's actually calcium carbonate that's my primary
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  component so probably if i
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  was if i was speaking to people who
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  were looking to get rid of sea urchins i would look at drying them and looking
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  at an alternative to calcified seaweed
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  that's the actual thing they should go up against because calcified
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  seaweed is a non-renewable resource that's harvested i think down in cornwall
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  and things like that in the english channel and when you buy calcified seaweed
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  now in the uk you actually get what you might term an ersatz product which is a substitute.
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  In the uk you shouldn't be selling product that's not calcified seaweed as calcified
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  seaweed what they're doing at the moment is they're getting muscle shells and
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  they're crushing it up and selling it as a calcified seaweed.
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  This is against the law, obviously.
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  You can't say a banana is an orange and sell it as an orange.
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  However, in the UK, the government is rubbish and the trading standards organisation
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  that would look into this are asleep at the wheel.
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  They never prosecute anybody for false claims.
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  Just look at all the false claims on hydroponic products.
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  So if I was looking at sea urchins, I would say
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  I would be pushing it as an alternative to of
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  calcified seaweed pushing its sustainable features
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  and saying that it contains the same components as calcified seaweed
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  plus concitin and high amounts of
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  calcium carbonate things like this so calcified seaweed
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  is not it's not cheap so it's a good alternative so yeah that's free to them
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  free bit of advice okay that's been hydroponics daily for today sea urchins
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  i don't know much about animals so i'm not an animal biologist i'm plant scientist
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  so keeping it short and sweet if you've tried sea urchin biostimulants if you've
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  got any information about seaweed,
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  sea urchin biostimulants then please get in touch and if you know somebody who
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  is share this podcast with them thank you very much for listening and until tomorrow goodbye.