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Glowing Soybeans and Bee Lifesavers: News Roundup · 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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  Today I've got a couple of news stories that I think are really interesting
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  and neither of them apply directly
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  to hydroponics but I think will be of interest to hydroponic growers.
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  The first one is a plant called, is a product called Inner Plant.
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  Well the company is called in a plant and their
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  their product is called crop voice and this
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  is a network of
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  genetically modified soya bean plants that
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  are positioned around nebraska
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  and south dakota and they are
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  genetically engineered to give an optical signal
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  maybe like a they glow in the dark or something like this when they're
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  infected with fungal diseases and they
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  are expanding this to commercial scale now so that when
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  soy bean crops are get infected
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  and before they show symptoms of fungal disease once
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  they're as soon as they're infected with the pathogen they light
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  up and this is detected by their technology and then
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  they issue alerts to the farmers that subscribe to the
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  service that they need to start taking measures
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  to control the disease and make sure they
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  can control it before and as we know with with disease.
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  It's always better it's always easier to control it one
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  at the start and once you've got
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  an infection underway and the disease takes hold
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  then it's a lot harder to control just like
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  say mildew which once you've got the black spores appearing
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  on your leaves it's almost impossible to control it in your grow room
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  so really interesting certainly could see that sort of
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  technology being applied to tomatoes and other
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  crops and things like this with disease especially potatoes like blight where
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  this travels across regions and things like this so that was a really interesting
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  news story and the second one doesn't relate to plants at all it's about varroa
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  mites which are a an arachnid that attacks a.
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  Bees particularly honeybees and as law
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  has resulted in millions of colonies
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  of bees being destroyed and becoming um
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  in in the last year or so so in
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  especially in north america in america so this is a this is the
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  number one problem of honeybees is varroamites and this new technology is rnai
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  or rna silencing nucleic acid silencing of genes so not genetic modification
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  but the application of nucleic acids, genetic material,
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  specifically targets to down-regulate and control the mites.
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  So it won't affect the bees because they're completely unrelated,
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  it won't affect any plants that the bees pollinate, crucially,
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  and it's shown really good effects. And so this is being commercialised now.
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  And the great thing about this is that you can put the treatments into the beehives
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  themselves, away from sunlight, because obviously UV light, ultraviolet light, it will degrade.
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  Any sort of nucleic acids that you spray onto a plant or
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  anywhere else onto a flower and so this is away
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  from the uv that would potentially harm it so you potentially much longer
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  lifespan for this sort of technology so really interesting because of that the
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  company that is doing this is reporting 18 weeks of protection from the bees
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  so that's a really long and big powerful claim so the company is green light
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  bio and their product is called no no roa as in no varroa It's trademarked, obviously,
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  as well. I'm sure it's patented to its eyeballs as well.
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  This sort of technology is very easy to patent and very easy to show that somebody
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  is infringing your patent, crucially.
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  So, U.S. beekeepers lost 1.7 million colonies between June last year and March
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  this year. That is colossal.
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  That shows you the scale of the process.
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  Selectively targets the mites and is distributed in the U.S.
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  By Man Lake Limited, whoever they are.
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  So really important for pollinators and
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  so loads of crops are pollinated by by honeybees
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  and it's not just bumblebees that we're
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  using in the greenhouses honeybees will be crucial for
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  many many crops and so this will
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  be a welcome development for
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  people growing apples and other bee pollinated crops i found this on the ag
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  digest website ag tech digest.com they also have a podcast which is read by
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  an ai voice and if you're driving in the car and you want to hear a load of,
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  news stories in agriculture and horticulture summarized
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  by an ai agent it's a good listen it's not the most friendly
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  ai agent not like me you don't hear doesn't give
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  an opinion on anything and it doesn't mutter or say uh all the time like i do
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  but it's a good it's a good good podcast to listen to so ag shout out to ag
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  tech digest and sign up for that one wherever you listen to podcasts if you
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  found this episode interesting then please do leave an apple podcast review,
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  and as always i'll see you again tomorrow goodbye.