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Growth Regulators in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Welcome back to the Hydroponics Daily. Today's topic is a controversial one.
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  It is the use of growth regulators in hydroponics.
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  Now, growth regulators are used in hydroponics to limit the height at which a crop grows.
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  Now, indoors, you struggle with crops that grow very tall, especially in the
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  UK, because grow rooms are normally two meters tall maximum.
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  You might want to put a fan and a filter above the light,
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  and if the crop gets too close to the light, it burns it
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  ruins the crop and becomes unharvestable and
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  unsellable so growth regulators are sometimes
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  used now they are normally an
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  inhibitor of the hormone the natural plant hormone
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  gibberellin gibberellin is a hormone that
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  increases plant height by increasing cell elongation and
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  stem length it's a very important hormone and
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  you can inhibit it with a number of synthetic chemicals these
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  either stop gibberellins being synthesized or they
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  prevent the plant from detecting gibberellins so
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  there's a whole range of different chemicals that can be used and they
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  limit stretch as it's called in the industry however these
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  chemicals are not authorized for use on most
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  of the crops that they are used on they're sold under
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  a different brand name and they because they're
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  not authorized they're not tested they've not gone through the rigorous authorization
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  that's required for growth regulators and they
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  have potential health risks so some growth regulators are
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  banned in the eu and like certain
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  ones are used on grapes that can cause limb deformities
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  in humans because these chemicals are working on hormones some of the hormones
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  are similar to the hormones in humans and you know you think about something.
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  That's affecting stems and limbs in plants can affect limbs in humans so there's
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  a potential health risk and a lot of table grapes were banned in coming from
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  india and it had two higher levels of growth regulators.
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  Other health risks around some of these compounds are
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  carcinogenic or potentially carcinogenic and so
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  i wouldn't put them on any crops that i would be using
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  i've used them before i've used them on rhododendron really good
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  at improving the flowering of rhododendron and they
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  were authorized or they were when i was using them for for increasing flowering
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  on rhododendron you don't eat a rhododendron though it's an ornamental plant
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  compounds like pack clobutrizole you'll hear this or it's trade name bonsai
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  you spray it on loads of flowers now when you plant that you go to the garden
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  center you see a plant with loads of flowers on you think brilliant,
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  what a wonderful plant it's going to look like that when i plant it in my garden
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  you plant it you bed it in you water it you feed it and just stays there because
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  these compounds don't break down for years if not decades and so you've got
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  a stunted plant that no longer got those flowers on and it takes years for the
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  plant to grow away from the,
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  compound and dilute it down so there's issues there even with ornamental plants.
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  And there's issues with crop quality as well so a
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  lot of people say they can see the difference in crops that
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  have been grown with growth regulators it's not as
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  good they don't have the right shape and form and smell and taste and
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  and and features that you're
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  looking for in a crop so growth regulators if you
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  can avoid them always avoid using them some compound
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  some additives you'll find in certain
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  grow shops will contain growth regulators and they
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  definitely won't say that they're in them but the grow shop will know
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  what they are and they'll often have a funky name there's no growth regulators
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  come near anywhere near gold leaf or liquid gold we would never use them there's
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  other ways to control plant height without using growth regulators and we'll
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  go into some of those some really interesting ways of controlling plant height without minimizing.
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  Yield and affecting crop quality as well
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  so we're going to focus on things like partial root
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  zone drying regulated deficit irrigation and
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  other ways beneficial microbes and things like this can help prevent stretch
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  so growth regulators always avoid
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  them that's been hydroponics daily if you've got a differing
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  opinion on growth regulators comment below and i'll probably ignore you because
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  i'm not going to use them and i'm not going to stop saying to tell people to
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  stop using them so let's have a flame war below come on give me absolute you're
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  worse why people should use growth regulators play devil's advocate with me
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  that's been hydroponic daily thank you.