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5 Non-Essential Elements with potential use in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily. Today we're going to talk about five
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  non-essential elements that you still may... Hi, welcome back to Hydroponics Daily.
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  Today we're talking about non-essential elements.
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  These are elements that are not required for growth but could improve the growth
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  of your plants. The first one is silicon.
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  Silicon is added to feeds to improve cell wall strength.
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  It's a bit like calcium, it improves the rigidity of a cell wall.
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  Because silicon is in glass, it's in silica, and it forms insoluble silicon
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  once it gets to the cells, and that's what gives its rigidity.
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  And obviously, if you increase cell wall strength, you increase resistance to
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  pests and diseases, and abiotic stresses, environmental stresses,
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  things like ozone, or high light levels, or very dry air.
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  Silicon's really good at resisting those particular stresses.
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  It can also form something called phytoliths, which sounds really scientific,
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  but just means phyto means plant and lith means
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  rock so little tiny beads of rock in
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  the plant that make it unpalatable to
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  anything that's going to try and eat it hopefully not
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  humans though so silicon is the only
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  one of these five elements is actually added routinely
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  to feeds well that i would recommend to be added routinely to feeds some people
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  add others so silicon for cell wall strength selenium is not required for plant
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  growth however it is required for animal health so in pasture grasslands it's often added.
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  Often linked to an amino acid, as I talked about in the previous episode,
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  as a bioavailable source of selenium for cattle in particular, also sheep.
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  They can get developmental brain
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  disorders if they don't have enough selenium, and humans can as well.
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  However, selenium is a toxic element if it's in high dose rates,
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  so I would never advise adding it in a hydroponic situation,
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  because you could be in for a world of pain.
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  And the same for cobalt. there are some
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  reports that cobalt is useful for nitrogen metabolisms
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  urease enzymes however cobalt
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  is a really nasty element and is.
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  Carcinogenic in both its pure
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  form cobalt sulfate and even when it's diluted
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  to the ratios that some people
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  say should be put on crops there's already enough cobalt
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  in the soil the more than enough for what you need
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  or in your growing media in your water don't add
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  cobalt and it's it's
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  just not required in any high concentrations
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  same for vanadium and titanium these are
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  there are reports that if you add them to plants
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  you would get an increase in yield or growth however normally
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  that's because they're substituting for iron and these studies were
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  done in very low nutrient levels or very high soil pHs
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  you're far better adding iron than you are titanium or
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  vanadium because they are a poor substitute in all the
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  enzymes that iron is required for by the
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  plant so don't think you need to be sort of
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  like you know dissolving up robocop to get.
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  You titanium you just just add some iron
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  ions are wonderful underappreciated nutrient in hydroponics and
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  so these are five of these the only one i would add the
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  only one i ever recommend is silicon and you can you can
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  buy silicon additives you have to be careful
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  with silicon it can raise the ph of your feed so you
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  do need to look at ph down if you're using a conventional
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  fertilizer if you're using gold leaf or in the uk liquid iron you don't need
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  to worry about that because of the concentrations of silicon you add this product
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  will bring your ph down to the sweet spot instantaneously so it's not it draws
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  it back to the sweet spot every time so don't need to worry about silicon addition.
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  Yeah five non-essential elements if you can think of any others
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  let me know we've discarded carbon oxygen hydrogen because you get them from
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  water and air and then there's heavy metals things like that that are toxic
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  and then there's other elements that have no real impact like fluorine and helium
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  things like that so they're your non-essential elements that's been hydroponics
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  daily for today thank you.