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Conquering Thrips Part 1: A Major Threat in Hydroponics · Hydroponics Daily

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  Hi, welcome back to the Hydroponics Daily. Today we're going to talk about another
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  supervillain of hydroponics and that is thrips.
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  Interestingly, thrips is the plural and the singular, so it's got an S on regardless.
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  But I'll forgive you for just saying thrip, because I do it all the time.
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  I've recently discovered that I cannot draw a thrip, or thrips,
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  because they are awful and they don't look anything like a thrip.
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  If you're if you're watching this on social media
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  if you're on the podcast i'll put a
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  picture of thrips on the logo for the for this particular episode the problem
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  with thrips is they're quite difficult to diagnose even though the insect is
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  there on your crop and that's because they are transparent when they're young
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  and they they absorb the color of the crop so they're often like a.
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  Transparent white then to a yellow and then eventually they might
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  go black or they might go green they might stay yellow depends
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  on the species and the plant they're on the way you normally
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  find out you've got thrips is that you have this.
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  Silvery mottling i think that's the word on the
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  upper surface of the leaf as opposed to spider mites
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  where you get the the webs and
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  the the the arachnids on the underside of
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  the leaf this is an unusual one in the insects attack the upper
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  surface even aphids normally go for the underside and
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  they leave this silvery mottling effect and everyone gets
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  really scared because they know thrips are potentially
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  devastating they can ruin your crop and they can survive in
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  the grow room even when you've disinfected everything out there
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  are lots of species of thrips there are hundreds thousands of species
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  of thrips but they all look very similar and they
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  all attack lots of different plants most of them they're polyphagous
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  they eat lots of plants there are some that are monophagus that eat
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  one particular type of plant there are even thrips that
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  eat thrips carnivorous thrips but the
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  most ones we're normally looking at are the i think it's
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  the western flower thrip the onion thrip the tobacco thrip
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  they're the three main species and they all look
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  very similar they're a problem because they
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  lay their eggs in the plant leaf so when you put on a spray that's not going
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  to touch the egg they emerge like alien the film Alien and start devouring your
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  plants and they go through a very fast life cycle and then they as a nymph,
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  a wingless nymph then they pupate.
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  They fall to the ground as a pupa. They might burrow down into the soil a bit
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  first, but they turn into a pupa.
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  And then they emerge as a winged adult. And then they don't fly very much.
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  Their other name is thunderflies.
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  And they tend to fly only in certain weather conditions. And they're really
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  rubbish at flying as well.
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  Very inefficient. And so they fly when there's thunder, when there's a storm.
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  They mate and then they get back down onto the plants.
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  This life cycle, the reason I'm talking about this life cycle is because it's
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  important for controlling them.
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  Because they pupate and they land on the ground and the soil,
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  if you just spray the leaves once and hope you're going to control thrips, you're not.
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  Because you're not going to get the eggs that are inside the leaf and you're
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  not going to get the pupa that are on the surface of the soil or on the ground in
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  your agrarian we'll talk about that more later or
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  tomorrow so eggs in the leaf peeper on the ground adults and nymphs on your
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  plants eating them and devastating the crop leaving it unsightly and reducing
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  your yield dramatically okay so that's thrips and more on thrips tomorrow we'll
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  talk about how to control these nasty little buggers.