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Are Soilless Crops Artificially Flavoured? Hydroponics Myth Busted · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  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 founder of Utrema Limited.
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  Recently, I got into a bit of a Twitter spat with an Irish organic livestock
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  farmer who was saying that all hydroponic crops are lacking in micronutrients
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  and artificially flavoured.
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  And that was absolute nonsense. He claimed that you can't measure micronutrient
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  levels very easily in food, which is absolute nonsense.
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  You can use a method called atomic absorption spectroscopy, which is found in
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  most university labs and most commercial labs worldwide.
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  And he was saying that these crops are artificially flavoured,
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  which is nonsense. They're not.
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  But then I thought, could you artificially flavour them?
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  Has there been been any research done on artificially flavoring crops and the
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  answer is no not really what you find is that people have looked at modifying
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  the nutrient levels increasing the electrical conductivity to try and increase the bricks level.
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  And reportedly improving sweetness, pungency, aromatic intensity for crops like
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  tomatoes, chilies, strawberries.
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  But the success varies widely and higher EC can boost flavour but it can also
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  reduce yield and plant size.
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  So probably not a good idea to do that.
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  You can manipulate the light in the environment and there's
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  a number of successes and failures doing that but that's not
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  really artificially flavoring the crops so i'm
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  going to move over that i'm also going to move over environmental stresses
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  because again that's that's crop steering crop
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  manipulation that's not artificial flavorings could you
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  add natural additives or biostimulants there's no clear replicable data some
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  biostimulants might claim that it enhances the flavor or the bricks content
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  the sugar content you know seaweed extracts and humic acids for our products
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  that contain those made from them. We don't make those claims, really.
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  They're not really a flavour-enhancing product.
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  There's no substantial scientific evidence that hydroponic crops are being genetically
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  or chemically engineered to contain artificial flavour compounds,
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  and really it's very difficult to do that anyway.
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  And actually, the production of secondary metabolites like phenols and flavonoids
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  may be higher in hydroponic systems anyway,
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  because they might be
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  exposed to uv light and things like this when they're not in field
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  crops or greenhouse crops so you
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  know field crops where it's plastic tunnels
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  that exclude the uv so there is that very rare do you come across a product
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  that actually claims to affect the flat the flavor one product that does claim
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  that is botanic hair sweet and it's sort of a finishing product mainly for the
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  legal cannabis sector though.
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  And it's not primarily used as a flavour enhancer. It's more that,
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  really to provide magnesium sulfur carbohydrates you know like a sugar type.
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  Sort of bud making it not brittle is not the word but what's the word i'm looking for,
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  improving the resin production but it does contain some natural flavorings so
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  flavor variants are berry citrus and grape and these these ester type compounds
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  and polyphenols may contribute some antioxidants and may contribute to vigour.
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  However, whether they actually do that is very debatable.
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  If you look on Reddit, speak to growers, then it's highly debated about whether
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  those compounds do do that.
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  So whenever you hear anyone say that hydroponic, vertical farmed.
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  Greenhouse, veg and fruit are artificially flavoured, you can tell them that
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  that is absolute nonsense.
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  There's no evidence to prove that. And even if we could do it,
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  probably wouldn't do it anyway because it's not good luck for farmers to
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  do that to produce artificially flavoured fruits and veg people want
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  naturally flavoured plants and a hydroponically
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  grown strawberry is tasty enough and as good as
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  a field grown one because people haven't noticed
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  that most strawberries are now hydroponically grown
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  and not grown in the soil and there was not a big you know
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  riot when that happened okay that's
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  been hydroponics daily for today i hope you liked this episode if you
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  did please give it a like and a review
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  on apple podcasts make sure you click follow to make
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  sure you don't miss an episode and at the very least check out utreema.co.uk because
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  while we don't produce products that change the flavor of crops we do produce
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  some amazing fertilizers biostimulants and organic biopesticides that you will
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  not find anywhere else in anyone else's portfolio they're all unique to us made
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  in our units in midlands of england okay until tomorrow thank you very much
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  for listening and goodbye.