Controlling mite infestations with nutritional inputs & regenerative practices | Regenerative Ag

Hi, friends. Welcome to our webinar, where today we are talking about how to manage nutrition for spider mites. The narrative that we're all commonly familiar with with spider mites is that they tend to show up in hot and dusty conditions when we have really high temperatures. And often for various parts of the country, when there's a lot of dust in the air that's being blown around. So there's lots of wind stress and in some cases dust on the leaves. But particularly high temperatures. And for some crops that are being grown in high tunnels, it's not uncommon to have challenges with spider mites in high tunnels as well. So we've become familiar with the idea that there is this environment that is required for spider mites to really flourish and become a serious problem. There's actually a bit more to that story that we've learned in the last couple of years with plant SAP analysis. And the rest of the story is that when we have plants that are in this high temperature environment, they can develop a specific nutritional profile that is kind of the foundational requirement for spider mites to first begin infecting a crop. So it's possible to manage attrition to avoid setting up this environment in the first place or to actually reverse this nutritional profile. Implants and to allow them to become resistant and no longer provide a food source for the mites, which is really what's happened is that when we change the plant's nutritional profile, they're no longer providing a food source for the mites. So for the webinar today, we're going to share a couple of examples of things that we've observed with some corresponding SAP analysis data. And then we'll describe exactly what's going on with plant nutrition, how we can manage plant nutrition differently to prevent these problems ever showing up in the first place. And then we're going to go straight to Q and A. All right, so foundationally, the first point is that spider mites are. This sentence says that spider mites are attracted to high levels of ammonium in plant SAP. But I would go so far as to say that spider mites are dependent on plants that have high levels of ammonium in plant SAP. If you can succeed in getting the ammonium levels within plant SAP to zero, you will not have spider mites. In fact, if you have trees or plants that already have spider mite, even a severe spider mite infestation in the plant canopy, if you can succeed in bringing the ammonium levels down, the spider mites will disappear. Either they will die if they continue to feed on the plant or they will leave. So it is completely possible to change a plant's susceptibility and resistance to spider mites by changing the ammonium status and the ammonium profile. So this raises lots of interesting questions, is how do we have plants that have elevated ammonium levels in the first place and how do we prevent it? Before we get there, I want to give you a couple of examples of what we've looked at. This first example is from an organic corn crop in southwest Kansas in 2015. So here again, we have a very high temperature, warm, dusty environment with fairly high winds, constant steady winds. So the crop is under a reasonable amount of stress. This was an organic crop. So the crop scout identified spider mites in the crop. This is what they look like pre treatment and following the identification. Almost at the same time that the crop scout had identified, spider mites were moving into the crop very strongly. Even before being aware of this, the grower had already decided to put on a nutritional application in his overhead pivot. This is what the plant SAP analysis looked like in the field. I want to point out these two levels that are highlighted. So for those of you not familiar with SAP analysis, we see here at the top we have a total sugar number that is at 0.9 and 0.8%. And these are actual measured sugars. This is not a brix reading. It doesn't correspond directly to a brix reading. These are actual, if I recall correctly, these are the total non reducing sugars that are being reported with this number. Then you see the second number a little bit further down. And this is ammonium parts per million 429 and 856. And immediately below the ammonium level, we have nitrates 795 and 574. This was back in 2015. We were not yet putting desired values of actual numbers on our SAP analysis, which is now the case today. And then you go down three rows further, you have total nitrogen 1728 and 1799 in the old and the new leaves, respectively. One of the foundational principles of nutrition management for insect resistance. We have observed to manage nutrition such that plants have abundant levels of total nitrogen, but that ammonium levels are below the detection threshold, which is five parts per million. And nitrate levels are also below the detection threshold, which is 20 parts per million. Our goal is to have both ammonium and nitrate show up as zero or none detect on the SAP analysis and at the same time have high levels of total nitrogen. What this means, in order for this to happen, it means that all the nitrogen that the plant absorbs from the soil or from the atmosphere in any form, whether it's in ammonium form or nitrate form or urea form, or an amino sugar form or amino acids, is rapidly converted to proteins and peptides, and it does not remain in the plant SAP in either the nitrate or the ammonium form, which this measuring technique is picking up and reporting separately from total nitrogen. So we know that anytime. I'm very confident, if we have crops that are in an environment, in a warm environment, and the crop is a crop type that is susceptible to spider mites, when we cross the threshold of 400 parts per million, if you have greater than 400 parts per million ammonium in plant SAP, there is greater than a 90% probability that you will have spider mites already present in your crop. If you can get that level down to a none detect, spider mites will cease to be a problem. Shortly after the crop scouter, I think it was almost at the same time that the crop scout identified the spider mites were moving in. This farmer put on an application of these nutrients through his pivot, based on a historical SAP analysis that had been taken a couple of weeks earlier. And when they were putting on these products, they were running the pivot around the circle as rapidly as they could to put on the least amount of water, which I think is 10,000 gallons per acre, if I recall correctly, and it might be less than that, I'm not completely certain of that anymore. But the smallest amount of water that they could put on with a pivot, and it took the pivot 48 hours to make the entire circle. So 48 hours after the application, the crop scout came back and looked at it again. And they observed that right where they started the circle first and the product had been first applied, the spider mites were dead. And at the end of the circle, where the product had just been applied a few hours previously, that was not yet the case. So it seemed to take about 48 hours for the effect to become observable and to actually see the dead spider mites in the field. So that the spider mites disappeared and they did not reappear for the rest of the growing season, ended up producing a yield of 215 bushels per acre of organic corn. And the other interesting aspect was that, in addition, there were also no corn earworm, there were no corn borer, There was no other insect pressure on this crop at all. An example on a different crop was peaches in California. So we have mites showing up. We have ammonium levels at 176 part per million on the new leaves and 93 on the old leaves. And again, you can see that the sugar levels, this is actually interesting. The total sugar levels on this SAP analysis show as being higher than common, which is a bit of an anomaly. Normally when we see the presence of spider mice in these high leaf temperatures, we see sugar content in the SAP analysis being lower, significantly lower in many cases when we have high ammonium levels, this is what the same crop looked like in 2019 when no spider mites were present. We have ammonium levels 92 and 53. So the ammonium levels are, they're still present. We would like for these to be at zero. But even at these lower levels and similar weather conditions, similar climactic conditions, we did not have spider mites showing up. So when we consider ammonium within the crop, the questions that we need to ask are what occurs for this ammonium to show up in the first place? And then once it is present, how can we manage it and how can we reverse it? So the challenge, as I mentioned earlier, is that plants, ammonium is coming from somewhere faster than the plants can convert it to complete proteins. So the three common conditions that can result in plants accumulating ammonium are when you have excessive nitrogen applications, not just in the ammonium form, but also urea, for example, or even nitrates, depending on soil conditions. So if there's excessive fertilizer, nitrogen applications, more than the plant can metabolize, that can result in an accumulation of ammonium. The second possibility is when you have saturated soils or very wet soils. And the third is when you have high leaf temperatures. And I would wish to emphasize the focus on leaf temperature. I'm not talking about air temperature. High air temperatures contribute to high leaf temperatures for sure, but there is not a direct linear correlation. The degree of plant health and the degree of photosynthetic integrity and lipid production can have a significant impact on the plant's capacity to cool itself. So the healthier a plant becomes, it can actually remain cooler in very warm environments, in very warm conditions. So the healthier a crop becomes, the cooler the leaf temperature when compared to an unhealthy plant in the exact same air temperature. So, so the focus, the emphasis needs to be that we need to be managing and measuring leaf temperature rather than, or thinking about leaf temperature rather than air temperature. So when we look at each of these three, the first consideration, application of more nitrogen than the plant can metabolize. So if we're applying nitrogen fertilizers. We need to spoon feed only what the crop requires, not put on large quantities at any one moment in time, because anytime we put on very large quantities of nitrogen, plants absorb it fairly readily. And if they absorb more nitrogen than they can convert, because perhaps they don't have enough sulfur, they don't have enough other minerals to fuel the conversion process. That will result in the accumulation of ammonium as well as the accumulation of nitrate in the plant. That sets the stage for spider mites to really flourish. The second possibility is that when you have soils that are wet, particularly soils that are saturated, this will convert the nitrogen that is present in the soil profile that might have been historically applied. It can be organic nitrogen from compost. Any form of historical nitrogen applications, or just the nitrogen that exists natively in the soil associated with organic matter, will convert to the ammonium form, because the ammonium form is the reduced form of mineral nitrogen. So we have this very reduced environment. For those of you familiar with the conversations I've been having the last few years about reduction versus oxidation, when you have a reduced soil that is saturated, you have this accumulation of ammonium or conversion to ammonium. The majority of the nitrogen in the soil will be in the ammonium form, which is why rice and blueberries are adapted to only absorb ammonium and they can't absorb nitrate because they are natively adapted to thriving in this saturated environment. This is not likely to be significant for growers who are irrigating a lot of. But it can have. It is possible with irrigation, particularly with flood irrigation, to have a short term snap effect. So if you're using flood irrigation, you can convert the majority of the nitrogen from applied fertilizer into ammonium and have it have an ammonium flush that maybe lasts for only three to five days within the plant, but that three to five day window can be long enough for the plant to accumulate enough ammonium to lead to spider mite susceptibility. It's a common practice for some growers to underneath tree fruit that we've worked with, in particular nuts and so forth to broadcast or to band fertilizer along the row and then to furrow, irrigate. And the fertilizer band would be placed at the side of the furrow. And when this happens, that means that those nutrients are now solubilized, obviously. But the nitrogen that is present, even if it's in the nitrate form, if the soil is warm, we have vigorous biology and we have an environment that is temporarily saturated, even for a 24 to 48 hour period, it will convert the majority of the applied nitrogen into the ammonium form. So you can actually temporarily create a strong surge of ammonium. That is a big deal to be aware of. The third environmental consideration. A third factor that can contribute to high ammonium is high leaf temperature. When we have high leaf temperatures, plants switch from being photosynthesis dominated to photorespiration dominated. Their primary processes switch. So the question is, what defines a high leaf temperature? And I'm going purely from memory here, this is double checking and verifying. But if I Recall correctly, for C3 photosynthetic pathway plants, which is most of our fruit and vegetable crops, and all the crops, mostly except the warm season grasses, these plants, the threshold is a leaf temperature of 78 degrees Fahrenheit. For C4 plants, such as corn and warm season grasses, the threshold, if I recall correctly, is 86 degrees Fahrenheit. So at these thresholds, plants will switch from being photosynthesis dominant to photorespiration dominant. And this is a really big deal. The reason it's such a big deal is because during photosynthesis, when the plants are photosynthesizing, they're absorbing water from the soil, collecting sunlight and carbon dioxide from the air, they're producing sugars. And during the photosynthesis process, the plant is getting the majority of its energy from sugars. During photorespiration, when the plant becomes photorespiration dominant, then the key process is that the plant needs to cool itself. And so to cool itself, it begins using the majority of the water flow as a cooling mechanism and begins respiring, rather than using the water for photorespiration. The result is that when this happens, sugar production and photosynthesis drops. So your sugar production goes down. Which is why I was pointing out on the SAP analysis that often when we have high ammonium levels because of these high temperature environments, sugar levels in the leaf actually drop as a result of a slowdown of photosynthesis. And yet this plant desires to sustain itself. It doesn't want to lose fruit, it wants to successfully reproduce. And in order to sustain itself, to keep from going backward, it has to get energy from somewhere. And so if it does not get energy from sugars, it begins getting energy from proteins that it has formed in the past. So during this photorespiration dominant period, plants sustain themselves by extracting energy and breaking down proteins. This process is called protein catabolism. And so during this protein catabolism process, they get energy from proteins, they break them down into their constituent peptides, then to amino acids. And the final breakdown product of protein catabolism is ammonium. So plants can actually accumulate ammonium within the leaf that did not exist previously as ammonium simply as a result of a high temperature environment. And actually we didn't put this point into the deck, but it's worth mentioning that plants, when they absorb ammonium from the soil, then the ammonium is converted to amino acids and to amine forms of nitrogen in the root system, so that conversion process doesn't happen in the leaves. So optimally for the plant, from a overall plant health perspective. So ideally, ammonium that gets absorbed from the soil is converted to amino forms of nitrogen and organic forms of nitrogen in the root system, and then moves up into the upper parts of the plant already as a constituent of amino acids, peptides and proteins. That doesn't happen when we over apply a fertilizer or when we have a flush of available ammonium from the soil. We can overwhelm the root system's capacity to convert all the ammonium to amino acids and so forth. So ideally, the soil should never deliver such a large flush of nitrogen at one moment in time that it overwhelms the root system's capacity to convert it. And if we're successful in accomplishing that, we will never get these high ammonium levels in the plant SAP as a result of a fertilizer application. So ammonium should never come from the root system upward. So if we're successful in doing this, when we do a SAP analysis, and the SAP analysis shows that we have elevated ammonium levels, that means the ammonium didn't come from the root system. It came, it was developed in the leaf as a result of protein breakdown. So now the next question becomes, well, it is optimal for a plant to convert ammonium the root system, how do you manage the conversion of ammonium back to amino acids and amino sugars in the aerial parts of the plant, in the canopy and the leaves? And it is possible, plants do have the mechanism to do this. It's not as efficient as doing it in the root system, but there is, there are nutritional requirements that have to be in place in order for this to happen and to work. Well, we'll get to those in just a moment. So when we look at preventing mite infestations, there's really two foundational factors that we need to manage in addition to nutrition. The first is that we need to reduce leaf temperatures and keep leaf temperatures cool. And I'll elaborate on that in just a bit. The second point is that we need to manage nitrogen applications with precision and only apply what the crop needs and no more. When we apply excessive nitrogen, we are asking for mite infestations. So when we consider managing leaf temperatures, the key characteristic is that plant leaves can be cooled much more efficiently when we have this glossy waxy layer on the leaf surface as a result of increasing lipid synthesis and lipid formation within the plants. This is something that I've spoken about frequently in the past. If you want to dig into this a bit more deeply, I would suggest looking at our previous webinars on the Plant Health Pyramid. What I'm describing here is that when plants get to level three of the Plant Health Pyramid, they begin producing an abundance, a surplus of lipids, more than the baseline that's required to sustain themselves for and to produce produce cell membranes. So when they produce this abundance of lipids, this layer of waxes and oils begins accumulating on the leaf surface. And we can observe this visually by the glossy waxy sheen that is present on the leaf surface. And I know from a lot of field experience and measurement that when plants and leaves have this glossy waxy sheen, they remain much cooler, that the leaf temperature is much cooler, and they warm up much more slowly than unhealthy plants, even in the same air temperature. I have some ideas and hypothesis about why that might be the case, but I've never sought to identify exactly why this is happening. I suspect that we know that waxes and oils are very efficient conductors. And I suspect that during the respiration, the photorespiration process, being very strong heat conductors, allows the plant to cool itself much more rapidly. And I also suspect possibly the waxes on the leaf surface reflect heat much better as well. So I don't know which or if either of those can be correct. I think it's something worth looking into and trying to understand better. But from a practical experiential perspective, we know it to be the case that plants that have this glossy waxy leaf surface can easily be 5-10°F cooler than unhealthy plants in the exact same environment. So that can be a very significant difference. That can actually mean a really big difference, because now these plants also require less water to stay hydrated, essentially, and to continue the photosynthesis process. So plants that have these higher energy levels, that produce lots of lipids actually continue to produce higher yields and they're continuing to photosynthesize in these high air temperature environments and applying minimal amounts of nitrogen, as indicated by SAP analysis. I've already Emphasized this point a couple of times. Only apply what the crop needs when it needs it. And what we have observed with SAP analysis is that there are two nutrients which are consistently over applied in much larger quantities than the crop actually requires. And those are nitrogen and potassium. There are many growers who can safely reduce nitrogen applications by upwards of 40% with no decrease in crop productivity. If they simply time those nitrogen applications at the moment when the crop needs them and not giving them and spoon feed them through the season rather than giving them all one shot at once, it creates a lot of pest susceptibility challenges. So the nutrients which are required to convert ammonium in the leaf back into proteins following the catabolism process or following the overwhelm of the root system. Whatever is happening is that you need to have adequate carbohydrates, magnesium, sulfur, molybdenum, and in some soils, in some situations, you also need to address nickel. We've found that with the first four elements, carbohydrates, magnesium, sulfur and molybdenum, putting on a foliar application of those four nutrients will convert the ammonium that shows up in a SAP analysis back into complete proteins in a matter of 24 to 48 hours in about 80% of the cases, 80% of the time, and maybe a bit more than that. But occasionally we don't get the response that we expect. And we. I've worked with some colleagues internationally who have done some homework on this as well. And we have some challenges here in North America working with nickel because from a regulatory perspective it's considered, considered to be a heavy metal and it's not something that we can make recommendations to apply to a crop. For most crops, pecans are an exception. There's a few crops that are an exception, but for most crops we can't make this recommendation because it's considered to be a heavy metal and the quantities that are required are extremely small. We're talking about in the neighborhood of 5 to 10 grams per acre of actual nickel. But for the most part, it's been difficult for us to access products or develop products that contain nickel that we can make recommendations for given the current regulatory framework. So that is something to keep in mind if you put on this application and don't get the response that you're expecting, which from our experience doesn't happen often, but it does happen occasionally. And that might be the reason why your soils might not have enough nickel. The products that we have put together, which contain these nutrients and produce this spider mite resistance response that we're looking for as a result of changing ammonium levels and changing the plant's nitrogen profile is photomag, rejuvenate and sea stem. So also wanted to point out an upcoming event that we have coming up in August, an online course that is going to be specifically focused on California agriculture and some of the topics and things that we need to be concerned with with dry land, irrigated fruit and vegetable production in these environments. So would love to see you there. If you have any follow up questions or want to dig a bit more deeply into understanding how to put these protocols together for your operation, specifically for not just for spider mites but for any other pests that you're dealing with, feel free to reach out to the Advancing EcoAgriculture team at this email address infovancingecoag.com they would love to hear from you and connect with you. So I see quite a number of questions have been coming in. I want to say thank you for that. I really enjoy them. So Question from Dan Pavitch how do you determine whether it's too hot to make an application folder application so the ideal is to put on foliar applications when leaf temperatures are below the thresholds that I mentioned 78 degrees Fahrenheit and 86 degrees Fahrenheit for C3 and C4 photosynthetic pathway plants respectively. And the easiest way to measure that is just to use an infrared thermometer that is a point and shoot thermometer. You can easily measure leaf temperature of the canopy with those. Follow up question from Dan Dr. Reams recommended applying a carbohydrate with your nitrogen. Companies like Conquint Ag disparage that practice. Do you have a preference? I prefer not to be asked about other companies practices but for our own recommendations. We consistently apply carbohydrates with our nitrogen sources both to the leaf and to the soil because our desire is to stay stimulate. Particularly in the case of soil applications, we want to stimulate biology to convert all of the applied nitrogen to amino sugars as rapidly as possible because we gain a lot of plant health and soil health benefits from that conversion. Question from Nathan Lindar Are there any irrigation systems that don't cause ammonia conversion from saturation? It's not the irrigation that is the challenge, Nathan. It is saturation. So anytime you have saturated soil that can be from rainfall or from any type of water addition, it's really the saturation that causes the conversion to ammonium. And another way of saying saturation and wet soil is it is the lack of gas exchange or the lack of airflow into the soil. So when you have soils that don't have good gas exchange or that don't have good airflow, and it can even be for a very brief period, if you have a lack of gas exchange for 24 to 48 hours, that can be enough to trigger the conversion to ammonium. The question of how much of the applied nitrogen will convert to ammonium in a 24 or 40 hour period is a question of how robust and how active is your microbial activity. The more active microbial activity you have, the faster the conversion to ammonium will occur. Another question. Do high concentrations of ammonium and fruit tree leaves excite many insects to attack fruits on fruit trees? The answer is yes, when you have abundant levels of ammonium in a plant. This goes back to the original research that Dr. Philip Callahan did on plant insect communication systems back in the 60s. He described that insects communicate with plants and are attracted to plants that have a very strong infrared signature. So in the infrared spectrum, plants with high ammonium levels show up as a neon light against a dark background. That is a direct quote from some of Philip Callahan's writings. Because ammonium is what is known to be ammonium is what is called an infrared signal pump. It's an infrared signal amplifier. So when you have high ammonium levels within a plant, that increases that plant's attractiveness to insects significantly. Question from Jason Linman. Hi, Jason. If ammonium is converted in the roots, then transported upwards, if there is an excess of ammonium from saturation or over application, will it bypass conversion and make its way upward into the leaves? Yes. The answer is that yes, it will. That is correct. And that's what I spoke about. Overwhelming the root system's capacity to convert. There's just simply too much volume coming in. The root system can't metabolize at all. It can't convert at all. And then it bypasses the root system and goes up into the canopy and into leaves and accumulates, shows up in the leaf in the ammonium form. Question from Nathan Lindauer. Do lipids protect from freezing as well as heat? That's a good question, Nathan. It's possible they might make cell membranes a bit more elastic. I don't know for sure. What I do know from experience is that we can gain about 6 degrees Fahrenheit in additional both freezing resistance and frost resistance as a result of good nutrition management. Normally that happens very early in the spring when there aren't a lot of leaves present. So we haven't particularly correlated that with the presence of lipids, but there might be a connection there. I don't know. What maximum air temperature can a very healthy plant resist by still keeping its leaf temperature below the photorespiration threshold? There's no short answer to that question. It depends on the plant species and it depends on water availability. So if there's abundant water or adequate water, then plants can use that water for photorespiration. They can cool themselves significantly. But I don't have a short and sweet answer for that question, unfortunately. I apologize. Follow up question, Would a seaweed boiler application contain enough of the nutrients required to convert ammonium to proteins? The answer is no, it does not. You need to add those additional elements that I spoke of above and beyond in the product recommendations outlined that we gave. The sea stem product is a seaweed product and it doesn't contain enough by itself to trigger the protein conversion process. Follow up question from Michael. Does the ammonium produced from protein catabolism have to be moved down to the plant roots to be converted back to amino acids? It's not my understanding that that is the case. My understanding is that the conversion process can happen in the leaves, but it's much less efficient than the conversion process in the root system. What kind of carbohydrates should we apply? Well, rejuvenate, of course. That's the obvious answer. That's the one that we make and sell. There's. You need a form of carbohydrates that the plants can metabolize. So some people use molasses and some use dextrose and various forms of sugars. None of I can, I can assure you that none of them will work as well as rejuvenate does because we have lots of experience demonstrating that and testing that and know that to be the case. Question from Ruben. What would be the effect of using phosphite or phosphonates, salicylic acid and other elicitors to get resistance against these diseases? This is a great question, Ruben. The brief answer from what we've observed is that you can use immune elicitors to trigger an immune reaction within the plant, triggering the salicylic acid pathway and the just jasminate pathway. And you can produce a temporary immune reaction, but if you don't address the root cause of the problem. So you might produce an immune reaction that it might slow spider mite development or other diseases or insect pests, it might slow their development or even halt them completely for a period of a week or two. But if the plant continues to have high levels of ammonium, the problem will continue to become worse after that effect. So these immune elicitors, when the plant is unhealthy and has high levels of ammonia, an application with an immune elicitor only produces a temporary effect that lasts for a week or two. If the plant is healthy and has low levels of ammonia, an application of an immune elicitor will produce a resistance response that can last for four to six weeks or longer. So you can have a tremendous degree, a tremendous difference in effectiveness of your other product applications dependent on the plant's nutritional profile. So if you manage the nutritional profile well, your immune elicitors will be much more effective and have produced a much bigger response than if you apply them only by itself and don't address the nutritional imbalances. Question from Gary Redding. Hi Gary, have you seen any issue with molybdenum being taken up with foliar applications in corn? We have not observed this at all. I don't recall that I've observed this. We typically see molybdenum responding very well and very strongly on SAP analysis with I will offer one caveat though is that molybdenum, what we do see is when molybdenum is applied during vegetative growth stages on corn, it seems that we can apply it and the levels don't increase significantly on follow up SAP analysis because the plant is building so much biomass so quickly. So it rapidly gets incorporated into biomass and kind of gets diluted out, if you will. Question does boron and silica play a role in control of spider mites? Well, it can play a role in that it can significantly. The presence of abundant boron and silica can strengthen cell membranes and reduce the predations of spider mites, but it doesn't address the root cause of the problem. If you address the root cause of the problem being the ammonium concentrations, then you won't have the problem showing up in the first place. Question from Greg Pennyroy. Hi Greg. According to Richard Mulvaney, 80 to 100% of plant needed nitrogen is from the soil, primarily in the amino sugar form. Shouldn't we not only be concerned with limiting any additional nitrogen but also the form is the formation best achieved through microbial conversion or is there a way to supply nitrogen in the amino sugar form? Greg, you asked the right questions. This is indeed the right question. The question that we should be addressing is how can we have plants not absorb any nitrogen from from the soil in the ammonium form and in the most recent podcast episode with Rick Mulvaney. He described how plants can actually absorb 100% of their nitrogen requirements in the form of amino sugars. And of course, when they absorb nitrogen in the form of amino sugars. This entire conversation that we've been having about spider mite susceptibility goes out the window, at least in the context of soil absorption. You can still have photorespiration occurring and protein catabolism, but you no longer get an overwhelm of nitrogen or ammonium from the root system. So that is absolutely what we need to focus on. And I've discussed this in other webinars in the past in some detail. But in brief, we need, if we need to. If our soil doesn't deliver adequate nitrogen for the crop and we need to apply additional nitrogen to the soil, then that nitrogen application needs to be combined with humic substances, with carbohydrates, with molybdenum and with other enzymes, enzyme cofactors, to be rapidly converted to the amino sugar form in the soil system. And I wrote a blog post about this. There's a recipe on the blog about exactly how to build this and how to put it together. But the short answer is, yes, absolutely. We should apply nitrogen to the soil in a form that plants are not absorbing nitrates and ammonium, and then you prevent all these problems from ever showing up in the first place. Question from Irene. Is there any connection of soil ph to mite concerns? Not directly that I know of. We see mites on all soil types. Question from Michael Grove. Will the nutrients required to convert ammonium to proteins work if level one of the plant health pyramid is not achieved first? So this is a good question, Michael, and the answer is that they will work temporarily. So temporarily they will convert all the ammonium to proteins over a period of and the effect will last. Similar to the question earlier on immune elicitors, the effect can last for a period of a week to several weeks, but it will wear off over time as the plant continues to grow and expand and biomass expands and those nutrients become diluted out. But if level one is achieved first, and then you add this, which is really level two of the plant health pyramid, is the ammonium conversion process. Now, the effect can last for a month or longer, so you have a much longer effect. Question from Dan. Do the same principles described here for spider mites also apply to larger pests such as tomato hornworm? Yes, they do. There is a slight difference. I described this on the plant Health pyramid webinar and in the plant Health Pyramid course on the Academy. The key difference is that many of the larval insects and aphids and so forth are attracted to nitrates rather than ammonium. So the heat and the protein catabolism conversation is not as relevant when in this, these cases we need to measure nitrate instead of ammonium. And I can go into some detail on those. Do go into some detail on how to manage nitrate on those in that webinar. We refer you to that for more detail. Question from Charles recently read a study that concluded that a 20 minute overhead irrigation could reduce leaf temperature of cotton by 5 to 10 degrees Celsius and resulted in increased carbon fixation. That's a good point. See, when you have increased carbon fixation, that means you have increased photosynthesis. That's the only way that can happen. However, subsequent irrigation events did not result in further increased photosynthetic efficiency. Can you explain why this may be not off the top of my head, I don't know the answer to that, Charles, but that is an interesting phenomenon. Would be worth digging into a bit more deeply to try to understand what's happening and what's going on. Question from Malcolm. What is the best source of carbohydrates to put into a synergistic stack for foliar spraying? The best source of all is rejuvenate. And the reason for that is because rejuvenate contains enzymes and enzyme cofactors and other things that don't get put on the label for regulatory reasons. That it's not just a carbohydrate in and of itself. There's no question that that is by far the most effective. But I know that there's also we have a lot of an international audience listening to this, both live and later. So your sources, your primary sources are going to be either molasses, which would probably be the top of my list because of the additional minerals that it contains, specifically cane molasses. Avoid genetically modified beet sugar and so forth. And then dextrose would be a good source as well. Those would be two that I would look at. You could also look at sucrose and corn syrup and so forth. But in general, I'm not really a fan of genetically modified sugar sources because plants do respond negatively to them. Interestingly enough. Question from Jason Linman. Is the conversion of ammonium to amino acids in the leaves less efficient than the conversion of nitrate to amino acids? Are there times when we should use both sources? So, Jason, ammonium conversion is actually more efficient than nitrate conversion. Nitrate conversion sucks A tremendous amount of energy out of the plant. It's, I think the most wasteful use of energy that a plant can have is converting nitrates in my understanding. And so nitrate conversion is very inefficient. The bottom line again is that we desire the plant to absorb 100% of its nitrogen in the form of amino sugars through the rhizophagy process that Dr. James White has described. Question from Lisa. Would it be helpful to do a mist cooling system for evaporative cooling? Also heard spider mites don't like moisture. Yeah, the narrative is that spider mites don't like moisture. That's not really the case. What spider mites don't like is plants that are low in ammonium. So when they cool better and you don't have the high ammonium levels, then you don't have challenges with spider mites. A question from Charles Bergeron. Does, given adequate levels of nutrition, does the Calvin cycle revert at night? The ammonium accumulated during the day, during the day's photorespiration back to glucose, back to sugars. This is a great question, Charles, and the answer in my understanding is yes, that ammonium accumulates during the day from the catabolism protein breakdown process in the high temperature environment when the plant is sustaining itself and then at night when the plant is a bit cooler, hopefully, and if it has the right nutrition, it will convert those. Question follow up question from Izzo. Do fruits exude an ammonium signal and can you block this by delaying senescence? They should not be transmitting an ammonium signal or an infrared signal. And yeah, really, you should not, you should not have a problem with ammonium coming from fruit. If you do, you have other more significant plant nutrition problems. Ah, great question from Sebastian. Are blueberries and rice expected to have detectable levels of ammonium in their SAP or should they be able to convert it all to amino acids and proteins in their roots as well? It's a great question and the answer is no. Blueberries and rice are not expected to have detectable levels for all of the crops that we've worked with for disease and insect resistance. Our goal is to have nitrates and ammonium at zero and to have abundant levels of total nitrogen. It again comes back to the plants absorbing all of their nitrogen in the form of amino sugars. That's the goal, that's the objective. Blueberries and rice can do that equally as well as any other plant. Follow up question in the case of ammonium, what's the situation with high levels of nitrate which is better then the answer is it's optimal to have zero of both. It's not. This is not an either or conversation. It's not a conversation that you should have either high levels of nitrate or high levels of ammonium. Both of them can be at zero. The goal is that if you apply any of them to the soil, ammonium nitrate or urea or whatever form you apply, you combine it with sugars, you combine it with humic substances so that it's rapidly converted to the amino sugar form in the root system, or excuse me, I shouldn't say in the root system, but in the soil by soil biology, by bacteria consuming this nitrogen and converting it into bacterial cells and into bacterial proteins. This is what we want to have happen. So when this happens, plants will have low levels of nitrate. None detect. They can have low levels of ammonium both at the same time and have abundant levels of total nitrogen. Their total nitrogen can be really high, but ammonium and nitrate levels can be zero. This is a signal of a truly healthy crop, a truly healthy plant. This is also, by the way, why one of the reasons why we don't use Hariba meters in the field is because you can have plants with abundant levels of total nitrogen. And when they're healthy, their nitrate levels will be zero in the petiole. Question from Andy Lynn. We've historically noticed red mite flare ups in the orchard near dusty roadways. Any thoughts as to why that is? Yes. When you have dusty leaves, it increases that leaf stress. And those leaves begin the photorespiration process sooner, so they don't photosynthesize as well. And they become photorespiration dominant earlier. So that also results in more rapid increase of ammonium accumulation in those leaves from the photorespiration process and the protein catabolism process. Follow up. Question from Charles. Can the effects of rejuvenate be replicated with a stack of other ADA products? The answer is no. Rejuvenate is something that is unique to itself. Question from Irene. Does this ammonium issue also apply to thrips? Yes, it does. You nailed it in one. Thrips similar to mites, also require ammonium implant SAP and they also occur in similar types of dry, dusty environments for the exact same reasons. Question from Michael Grove. Can drone technology with special cameras detect this ammonium signature in the field? So don't think of it as an ammonium signature. It's an infrared signature. And the answer is yes, they can pick up the infrared signature in the fields. Question is, when you have that information, what are you going to do with it. Question from Chris Hall. In a cherry orchard, would it be beneficial to apply a liquid urea application to the soil during the winter or prior to bud purse for the microbes to convert to an amino acid and sit in the soil until the trees require it? So I'm realizing this conversation is really revolving around nitrogen management. The bottom line is the optimal way to manage nitrogen is to put on a minimal amount in the spring. Let me back up just a moment. First of all, you can measure the quantity of nitrogen that the soil can release and deliver to the crop using a Haney soil analysis. There's now half a dozen laboratories that run these analysis, Midwest labs, Ward labs, there's several labs that run this analysis specifically. And they actually measure the organic nitrogen component in the soil, which is your amino sugars and your amino acids and so forth. And they vary accurately. This test corresponds the most accurately with actual field performance of any test that we've looked at. So you can actually measure the nitrogen that can be delivered from soil biology to the root system and see whether you need to add any more 80% of soils. You don't need to add an additional nitrogen application in the spring because that's not when the crops peak requirement is for most crops. And I'm making generalizations here, but we're focusing largely on fruit and vegetable crops in California for this conversation. But for most crops, the peak nitrogen requirement is not when the plant is young and early spring, it's later on during the fruit fill period. And so if you have the long term goal is to develop soils that have adequate organic matter, abundant enough organic matter that you don't need to add any additional nitrogen. And that's a very realistic and achievable goal. And it doesn't take that long to get to that point. With some of the work that we've done on dryland corn crops in Kansas, we've been able to develop soils to the point where they supply, they sequester nitrogen from the air and they supply 100% of the nitrogen requirement of a corn crop with no cover crops and no applied manure coming exclusively from microbial sequestration. And this can happen, I think this happened in 24 months after our first applications were made, if I recall correctly. So it can happen fairly quickly if the system is managed well. So that's the long term objective. The short term objective is to only apply nitrogen to the soil when the crop needs it in a microbial friendly form. So how do we do that? We begin the season with A Haney soil analysis to see exactly what is in the soil, what the soil can deliver. Then we use SAP analysis through the season to determine whether the plant has enough total nitrogen. And when total nitrogen levels begin dropping on the SAP analysis and if we're still in the fruit filled period or approaching the fruitful period and we see that the soil can't supply enough, then we spoon feed just enough to sustain that crop for a two to three week period. So we might put on 20 units of nitrogen per acre in the form of urea, that is combined with carbohydrates, combined with humic substances, combined with molybdenum and this recipe that I wrote about in the blog post to convert all of the urea to amino sugars and to have all of it be consumed by biology within days after application. Because now when it's consumed by biology, it's no longer leachable. The plants can still absorb it, but it's not flushed, it's not ammonium, it's not nitrate, it's amino sugar. Completely different. That's the goal that we're looking for. So then, and if need be, depending on the crop and depending on its nitrogen requirements, we can also foliar feed some nitrogen. This is not something we do often. We try to avoid it as much as possible, but in crisis situations we have foliar fed nitrogen applications, usually in the form of urea. Again, it's a common one. You can also use some others. You can also use amino acid nitrogen as a foliar something that our organic growers are doing quite a bit of. So that's kind of the big picture overview of how we manage nitrogen to avoid ammonium accumulation and to avoid nitrate accumulation. Don't begin the season by putting £100 up front because it makes no sense to do that. Follow up question, are sodium and chloride also related to mites? Not directly. Whenever chloride is present in SAP higher than total nitrogen, it tremendously increases the susceptibility to all pests, including mites. So there is a connection there, but it's a connection in terms of the relationship between the two. Can molasses easily be over applied? The answer is yes, you can over apply carbohydrates both as a single application. And you can also have problems from multiple applications over time because you can weaken the soil biology if you do multiple applications over time and turn them into sugar junkies if you will. And in the short term, if you put on a large application all at one shot, the biology eats first and they can actually if you have soil that has, let's say, for example, if you had soil that has limited calcium availability, when you apply large quantities of molasses, you can get this surge in bacterial populations that consume all the calcium and hold it within their own cells and deprive the crop of calcium. This is something that we've seen happen on a number of occasions when growers exceeded recommended application rates. Question from Andrew Jacques. Do you think it's feasible for a crop such as hops to have enough nitrogen throughout its short growing season without having excess ammonium within the SAP? Typical hop growers will apply anywhere from 120 to 200 pounds of end spoon, feeding it throughout the growing season. Two spotted spider mites are a huge problem for hop growers, probably our biggest pests. Andrew, the answer is definitely yes. I think it's absolutely possible to have enough nitrogen without excess of ammonium. The reason I believe that to be the case is because we've actually observed that and done that with Hopskirk that we've worked with already. So you can connect with our team at AEA and we can give you some specific recommendations for how to manage that. A question from Can a soil oversaturated with mycorrhizal fungi that fix atmospheric nitrogen be introducing too much hydrogen to plants? So the question essentially is, can you have soils that have so much biology that they deliver excess of nitrogen? I'm sure that's possible, particularly if you have a lot of protozoa or not parasitic but grazing nematodes that are grazing on bacteria and releasing nitrogen. I'm sure it's possible to release and mineralize so much nitrogen in the soil profile that you actually produce an excess in the crop. I haven't seen this occur often, but I have seen it a few times, so that is something that can occur. Follow up question from Jock and Grace. Do you have any suggestions for situations where we have chloride consistently higher than total nitrogen? My recommendations would be to use spectrum ds, which isn't known. Combination of spectrum ds, humic substances such as humicarb and rejuvenate, combination of those three, is known to lower chloride levels in the soil over time and in the plant SAP fairly quickly. One last question from Chris Hall. What is nickel's role and how important is it? My understanding is that the role of nickel is as an enzyme cofactor for some of the key enzymes that are required to convert ammonia back into proteins. It's also an enzyme cofactor that is required for the nitrogen fixation process by rhizobium bacteria that are that have a symbiotic relationship with legume crops for the same reason. So it's required as an enzyme cofactor in very tiny concentrations and when it's absent, it seems that the ammonium conversion process I won't say I don't have the knowledge to say that it doesn't work, but certainly have observed that it works much less efficiently and much more poorly. So those are all the questions that I have at this point. I want to say thank you to all of you for participating. I hope you you found the information valuable and useful. If you have any follow up questions that we missed, feel free to send us an email and we look forward to being in touch and connecting more. See you again sometime soon. Thanks everyone. Bye.