How Brix Levels Impact Insect Pressure on Plants | Dr. Thomas Dykstra

I want to say welcome to the webinar that we're having today with Tom Dykstra where Tom is going to teach us about leaf brix readings as they relate to insect feeding on plants. And I know that many of you have probably heard of Tom before with some of the work that we've put out there. I've had him on the podcast, I've put out a couple of blog posts on his work. I had a webinar with him earlier this year with some UK growers where we talked about aphids and flea beetles on a couple of different crops. And in case you haven't had or haven't had the chance to listen to any of those resources yet, I would highly recommend them. Tom is an entomologist who has gone down his own pathway and has ignored the pathway in the road that everyone else has traveled and is constantly reminding them that they are going down the wrong pathway. For which we're all very grateful, Tom. So Tom is actually has continued with Philip Callahan's research and then has also furthered that research on his own and gone taking it to an even greater depth and greater level. So I'm really excited to have this conversation with Tom today. Tom is going to give us a presentation that's going to be a bit longer than some of those that we normally do. It's probably going to be right around the neighborhood of 50 to 60 minutes and then we're going to open it up for Q and A. So I wanted to give you a heads up that it's going to be a little bit longer than we often have. However, knowing Tom, the presentation is going to be absolutely electrical. You'll see the sparks shooting out through the screen and Tom, payback, payback.

And you don't want to miss it.

It'll be really information packed, really valuable, and I think you'll really enjoy it. So, Tom, thank you for being here. You're welcome for the introduction and have a way.

The topic, as John has already introduced, is on leaf brix and insect herbivory. For those of you who may not be aware, I don't know how new you are. I was even told that there could be some young students here. Herbivory is eating plants. It's not just about eating herbs as the name suggests. And so that will be a main focus of the talk. The leaf brix, however, is going to relate that to insect herbivory. Now, the leaf brix is something which some of you, I'm sure, are familiar with and others are not, but it's going to be in reference to that magic number of 12 which has gone all over the Internet. And I wanted to be able to elucidate and make clear that there's a lot more to it, as I think everyone did kind of seem when this figure started going around the Internet as being the magic number to achieve above 12 versus minus 12 is that there's really a lot more to that. And that's what this presentation is hoping to convey. So I'll begin. I'm going to hit hard. So, second slide, presentation, thesis. Insects only feed upon food that is considered unfit nutritionally poor, dead or dying. So I wanted to hit with something as heretical as possible right from the get go. I did not want to waste any time, didn't want you to think that this is just going to be your average, ordinary presentation. Because this is something that I'm sure some of you have heard before and a lot of you have not. And for those of you who have not, you're probably just going to believe me just because I have it up here as my second slide. And you might be accepting of that. Others of you are not probably accepting this, probably thinking, I went to school, I didn't learn this. I've never heard of anything like this before. What is this guy talking about? Sure, he has three entomology degrees, but I really don't know if he's. If he's got a firm grasp of this subject. So it's you that I'm going to start with. And I want to start by saying that as far as this competition is concerned, because many people do not feel that we are actually, or they feel that we actually competing with insects for food. And that's what this is all about. And here I am saying that, no, they're not. And in order to make that point, there's no really no better place to start than with elephant dung. So elephant dung beetles feed on elephant dung. This is not food for me. It's not competing with my taste buds. I'm not the least bit concerned about this. And so I want to be able to make the point that insects, again, are feeding on something which is considered to be unfit nutritionally poor, dead or dying. And this should be clear to everybody that we are dealing with a group of animals, insects, that are, in truth, not competing with us. Subterranean termites. Same thing. Or even if they're not, there could be dry wood or damp wood, termites, but they're eating wood. This is also not competing with us. None of us go out and we start gnawing on trees. Most of us, I hope, do not do that. And therefore this is also another food source that we are not competing with insects for love bugs. If you're from the Southeast, you know all about these, especially Florida and Louisiana. The love bugs are known for. They're usually found together, which helps to explain the name love bug. And they are often splattered on cars or attracted to highways. And these guys feed on decaying vegetation. The key word is decaying. So there are a lot of insects out there, but there are also a lot of them that feed on decaying vegetation. And that's the key here. So most of us would prefer to eat vegetation that is healthy, or at least healthy looking. Not the case with the love bugs and with many other insects. They only feed on decaying vegetation. Clothes, moths. I don't think I'm shocking anybody by coming out with these comments, but cloth, linens, these, we're not competing with them because we're not eating these type of things. So when you have a clothes moss and we've got three to four species out there that are attacking clothes, none of us are thinking, oh no, you know, there goes my dinner tonight. We may be thinking, there goes my coat, there goes my jacket. But we're not thinking, there goes dinner tonight. And this is also not dinner. So we could have dermested beetles, we could have lots of cliptorate Muscoids out there. Will also clean off bones very well. Domestids are usually kept in museums for that purpose. Domestics also eat the dead insects. Quote dead insects in my insect collection. So I need to keep them out. So here they are cleaning off the skull of what could be a deer or an antelope or something like that, preparing it for display in a museum because they're very, very efficient at doing that. Once again, not something I want to be gnawing at. Flies. Many flies similarly lay eggs only on carrion, only on dead animals. So we've got a California fly up there, is a green bottle fly up there at the top. They're very, very common around carrion, which are dead animals. We usually see them on, on the side of the road, there's a deer down there, and it will take as little as 30 seconds, but no more than five minutes after an animal dies for the flies to start appearing. They're very, very quick in order to get there. And although some people may say, well, if it's a fresh kill, I will eat it. And I get that. But remember, these flies are eating on the Animal as it continues to decay. And this will take sometimes over a week. Once again, we are not competing with insects. Cockroaches. Wow. Need I say more? Does anyone think, you know, that we should be scrounging around behind our refrigerator eating whatever scraps of food that we can find? No, but the cockroaches do. This is what they like to feed upon, among other things. And they will be found oftentimes in the kitchen, finding whatever food they can. Once again, cockroaches are not competing with us. Drosophila melanogaster, the fruit flies. They are found around overripe fruits and overripe vegetables. This is also a key word, overripe, meaning that they've passed their life as far as human is concerned. Because when we eat something, we prefer a fresh cucumber or a fresh vegetable or any that type of thing. But drosophila, not the case. They only go after overripe fruit. So if you are in the store and many people, if they see some of these flies flying around, let's just say tomatoes in the grocery store, they'll think, oh, no, I'm not going to grab those tomatoes because they've got flies all over them. But most of the tomatoes are probably just fine. If you go digging, and I do, in the grocery store, you can actually find the overripe tomato that they're going after. So if you see a few flies flying around, if you find that overripe tomato, there could easily be 20 to 40 flies on that one. And that's an indication that they are specifically going after the. And not, let's call them, the good tomatoes. That would be maybe on the top. So as I continue to try and make my point, because I'm still trying to convince some of you skeptics, we have stored product insects and they only attack food after it begins to die. And I put that in quotes because when you pull in the food from the field and you place place it into a warehouse or a storage grain bin or a silo, you could say that the food is dying at that point. And there's a specific group of insects, the stor product insects. We even have courses at the entomology at the university level that focus specifically on store product insects are similar. So we have the India meal moth, the number one store product pest in the world. Off to the left, the red flower beetle, sawtooth grain beetle, all great pests for stored products, but they will not attack things out in the field, or most of the time they will not attack things out in the field. There are very, very few exceptions. So here we got a situation right now where I've been trying to make my point that insects are not competing with us, they're only going after bad food. And some of you may be thinking ahead and thinking, okay, Tom, you're just cherry picking things right now. This is not really the way it is. I mean, I've got a farm, I've got insects attacking my crops. This is what I want to focus on. So, you know, don't give me your old cockroach Drosophila melanogaster thing. I need you to focus more on the plants. And I would say nothing has changed. My thesis is still valid. The insects are only going after unfit nutritionally poor dead or dying plants, as well as some of the foods that I just mentioned. So in order to hit home my point and I need to appeal to reason in this, here's a picture I took when I was in Hawaii, a place I'd love to be back in right now. But in the tropical rainforest we've got a lot of vegetation. It doesn't matter whether it's in South America, tropical rainforest, whether you're in Hawaii, there is a massive amount of vegetation. And if you go out there and I have, you can find a lot of insects. So I ask you rhetorical question. Why haven't the insects decimated the tropical rainforest? Why haven't they eaten all of it? What is actually preventing them from within a season, two seasons at most, of completely destroying and eating every single vegetative leaf in the tropical rainforest? But they haven't, because if you go to the tropical rainforest, doesn't matter whether it's Hawaii or anywhere else, most of the plants are growing very, very well and there's very few insects feeding on them. There are some insects feeding on some, but mostly they're not. Why is that? And I'm telling you it's because they are very, very selective. They're only going after certain plants that they wish to eat and they're going to be passing up other plants that they don't want to touch. So we've got some beautiful plants in Hawaii. The tropical rainforest remain virtually untouched. And that's part of the reason. So this then begs the question, what does constitute a healthy plant? How do you know that a plant is healthy? Well, I've let you know already that there is one indicator already, and that's the insect. If the insect is attack is attacking your plant, you've got some idea that it is unhealthy. But if you don't have those indicators. Let's say you're spraying insecticides and you're killing the insects. You're not able to use them as indicators. How do you tell? Can any of you tell as you're looking at this plant right now, just by eyeballing it, is it healthy or not? And for those of you who say it's healthy, I would say, why scientifically? Can you explain to me scientifically why that plant is healthy? And for those of you who think it's unhealthy, I would ask you too, why? Why is this plant unhealthy? Can you explain to me why it is? And so this, it gets to the point now where you realize, okay, there needs to be some way in order for me to determine whether a plant is unhealthy or not. That's got to be a good starting point, especially if we don't have the insects in order to tell us. And it would be good if we could scientifically show that for what we want to do, which in my presentation is to make the point in slide number two. So what constitutes a healthy plant? There are many people who have their own ideas as to what that is. One of the things that comes back is it's tall. And the reason why they explain is because a tall plant is growing well, therefore it's healthy. And if it has stunted growth, it's not healthy. Therefore, we can tell by how tall it is. Well, by that definition, we are now claiming that all trees are healthier than all shrubs, which is not valid. So we cannot say that. So if we can't use that across all plants, and we can't, then this is not something that we need to that we can use as an indicator. Does it grow fast? Some would say if it grows fast, it's healthy. And if it's not, again, stunted growth, it's not doing well. But if that's the case, then bamboo is one of the healthiest plants out there. We know just by reason that bamboo is not necessarily the healthiest plant that's out there. But if it grows fast, you would claim that it is. We can't use that as a reliable indicator as well. How about, is it green? This often comes up. Or even better yet, is it dark green? Because now you've got a good idea that the plant is healthy if the plants are nice and green. If they got a nice dark green, it's not light colored, there's no chlorosis, then you've got an indicator. But even this breaks down because you can Take. You can throw iron at a plant and green it up temporarily. You can also throw some nitrogen at a plant. You can green it up temporarily. I can measure it and tell you that the plant is stressed, but you can do, for example, those two things and temporarily green up a plant. So it doesn't necessarily mean that it's healthy either. Will it flower? This often comes up a lot, especially for those farmers who are interested in the flowering. But this only applies to the angiosperms. So there's a lot more to it than that. We need a lot more than simply flowering. The number of flowers, I would contend, is also an indicator, too. But that's a subject for another day. Does it have a good root system? Now we're moving below the ground. So if it has a good root system, it's healthy? Well, strictly speaking, yes, it is. But not all plants have the same root system. Some go a little bit deeper than others. We just mentioned the comparison between trees and trees often have a tap root which can go down 50 to 100ft. So that's not a good indicator. Simply because they have a tap root that goes down doesn't mean it's healthier. And so we cannot use roots as a reliable indicator, too, of plant health, even though it has its place. So does it grow even? I get this a lot from farmers. Obviously, they want to harvest everything at the same time, and if everything is even, then they consider that a healthy crop. And if it's uneven, where they have to go out there two, three, four times to harvest, then there's a problem. But honestly, do you think that that's a good indicator, too, is that all of the plants are growing even, and therefore that is a clear indicator of health? I think we're going to need a lot more than that. And then we have. This is my favorite, because many homeowners will come up to me and say, oh, yes, my plants are healthy because I grow it in my garden or on my porch, and therefore it's healthy, and that should be good enough for you tomorrow. So that's not a reliable indicator, because that which is on your porch is not really going to help on someone else's porch or on someone else's land. So, no, that's. Sorry, that's not going to cut it either. So the quickest. The quickest. The fastest way to determine plant health is to test plant SAP with a refractometer. That's the fastest. How fast is it? You can do it within a few minutes if you have the equipment, you can get an answer within a few minutes. And that is because it's the fastest way, It's a good reliable start. It's not the end all. It's not going to tell you everything you need to know about your plant, but it will tell you in a matter of minutes whether it's healthy or not. And so the Brix refractometer is often what it's termed. The reason why brix is put in there is because oftentimes people are using a refractometer, are using it to test brix, which is the level of sugar and the reason why Brix is used and not others. Because even though this is measuring dissolved solids, the refractometer is actually measuring the diffraction of light, the refraction of light. What it's doing is mostly, and I say mostly, measuring sugar. So by default we use this as an indication of sugar. So there are some trolls on the Internet who get off on telling people that there's a lot more to it it than sugar, but there's really not that much more. It really is a measure of sugar and some of the other minerals are a minor component of it. So when you're measuring something with a Brix refractometer, it gives you a good reliable indicator of what the level is. And here we got the magic number of 12 listed off to the right. We do have two different types of refractometers, by the way, for those of you who are not familiar with it. The one to the left is a handheld one and it can be used by placing a drop on the screen and taking a look at it through the eyepiece. If, however, you are into more technology like I am, and you really like to be able to differentiate between 12.2 bricks and 12.3 bricks, then you'd probably want to get a digital refractometer because that will give you that completely unnecessary difference between 12.2 and 12.3, because we think thrive on these numbers. So here we have 12.3 brix, which is another way of saying it's about 12% sugar. And that kind of gives you an idea of the relative level of the plant. And this then goes back to the question of if it's above 12, it's healthy, if it's below 12, it's not healthy. And I'm here to tell you that there's more to it than that, although that's a good starting point. So we do have many different types of insects out there, and I think this helps to clarify for everyone, is that there's a lot more to it than 12 and that you're going to be dealing with grasshoppers, which eat plants for very different reasons than aphids. So because of that, you cannot use the same scale, for example, with the grasshoppers as you would the aphids and all of the insects that are in between. Because it's more complicated than that. We need to understand a little bit more about insects to understand why there are different levels of brix for each. So since we're gonna. I just showed you the aphid, we're gonna start with that. Most of the insects have the grasshopper digestive system, and that is that you have a tube within a tube. The digestive system is a tube. The grasshopper is also kind of considered a tube. And so when food is passed through the mouth, it is taken into the digestive system, passes in one direction, makes its way to the anus and passes out the back end after the grasshopper or any other insect has used and utilized whatever it needs to. So this is what most insects have, is a unidirectional digestive system. Not the case with the aphid or the haemopterous insects. And they have a little bit different system. Sure, food does come in and it does go in a unidirectional manner. It's taken in, as the arrows do indicate. But something weird happens. This digestive system folds back upon itself. And because it folds back upon itself, which does not happen with the grasshoppers and most other insects, there is a mechanism set up in order to bypass a lot of the nutrients getting into the insect. And so we have what is known. And therefore nutrients can actually be absorbed directly into the hind gut and then passed out the back end. And this is the reason why aphids and other homopterous insects are passing out mostly sugar from their back end. So if you park your car underneath a tree that has a lot of homopterous insects, they'll be defecating a lot of sugar on your car. It'll be very sticky when you come out. Honeydew is a. Is a delicacy among many ants. They like to get the. The poop coming out of the back end of the aphid. And this is the reason why, is because a lot of the sugar is passed into the hindgut directly, most of it, and then it's passed out so that the sugar does not overwhelm the aphid. If the sugar gets into the aphid, it will overwhelm its system. It will be absorbed into the aphid. And it will kill the aphid within a few seconds. When I say seconds, I mean less than a minute. And once that occurs, you have what's known as a candied aphid. These candied aphids are full of sugar. They're dead, well preserved, and sitting on a plant, seemingly eating or sucking on it, when in fact they're not. They're dead as a doornail. And this can happen if they get temporarily overwhelmed by an influx of sugar. That is, a plant is able to get particular nutrients and increases its sugar levels. And then boom, it overwhelms the aphid and can kill it if it isn't able to pull out fast enough. So this is known as the haemopteran filter chamber. That's the filter chamber right there. And this is based upon the fact that the digestive system folds back upon itself, thus allowing water and sugar and other things that the aphid does not wish to get inside its body. Here we have another situation to explain the difference between insects. We've got just a representative nucleotide or protein composed of 33amino acids, are all set up in almost like a train fashion, in a linear fashion here. And I wanted to differentiate between those amino acids in yellow versus the ones that are in blue. This is a complete 33amino acid protein nucleotide. And if you were able to separate that, you would now have an incomplete protein. An incomplete protein is partially digested. If it's complete, it's not digested. Now that it is broken apart, you could say that it's digested. This can happen through enzymes. So if we have an enzyme off to the right over here, which is in blue, it needs maybe a cofactor. I'll just arbitrarily say that it needs manganese and that this enzyme only works with manganese. And then it will clip the nucleotide at a particular spot and break it apart. This is in part how digestion occurs inside us or any other insect. And so these. There is a difference between an incomplete protein and a complete protein. We've now got this situation too, with proteins. Let's just say it is complete, but it didn't fold correctly. Some of the folding that occurs in proteins is caused by a disulfide bridge. A disulfide bridge occurs between two cysteine residues of a protein or an amino acid polypeptide. And therefore it causes the protein to bend in a particular way. When a protein bends in a particular way, if it does so in the correct way, that's also considered to Be, shall we say, complete, because it's now completely folded. It may have all the amino acids, but now it's completely folded. And in this particular case, it's folded correctly because a cysteine bridge is formed. And let's just say arbitrarily, that zinc is required as a cofactor for this particular enzyme in order to fold it. So these proteins are important for insect digestion. And how they fold is important because this folding is absolutely necessary for its ability to work properly. The hemoglobin molecule in our bloodstream, the red blood cell, is composed of four heme groups. And these four heme groups come together. They're color coded right here for clarity, to show you that this particular protein, the hemoglobin molecule, is composed of four individual units. So the ability to digest this has just become more complicated because you're just not breaking apart amino acids. And that primary level. Now you're at the secondary tertiary quaternary level. And insects have to be able to break all of this stuff down. And I could tell you that a lot of insects are not very good at this. They prefer dissolved nutrients. Dissolved nutrients. I mean, if you go to the hospital and let's just say, I don't know, you got your tonsils out, you weren't able to eat very well, or you just had surgery, they'll hook you up to an IV and you will have dissolved nutrients in there. Sometimes it's just water, sometimes it'll be salt water, other times they'll actually put nutrients in there, but they're dissolved. They must be dissolved because they're going directly into your bloodstream if they are not dissolved. If someone put a cheeseburger in that bag or a pizza in that bag, you would have issues, because our body, our blood system, is not able to digest a cheeseburger or a piece of pizza. And therefore that must be dissolved in order for it to get into your bloodstream. It's a very similar type of setup with the insects. All of the insects prefer dissolved nutrients if they can get it. And here we have the case of sugars. So at the top left, I've got three, six carbon sugars. We have fructose, galactose and glucose. These six carbon sugars are some of the basic sugars that we use in life. Fructose is very common, a lot of fruiting structures. Glucose is actually the main sugar molecule that we use for digestion. And these individual units are broken apart into their six carbon constituents. But directly underneath that we have sucrose, which is composed It's a disaccharide, meaning it has two monosaccharides associated with it. So instead of being a single six carbon sugar, we now have 12 carbons involved because they're together in a disaccharide. And you can also have a trisaccharide, which I have listed beneath that. But to the right, we've got an interesting situation. We have cellulose. Cellulose is not a monosaccharide, a disaccharide, a trisaccharide. It's a, it's a polysaccharide. It's composed of multiple repeating units of glucose. And so glucose, as I just mentioned 30 seconds ago, was the main sugar used for our digestion. Therefore, cellulose is infinitely digestible or usable for us. And yet it's not, because cellulose can't be digested. So if you could break about those sugar units, those glucose molecules, you would be able to digest a tree, but you can't. And the reason why is because of the bond. So those bonds, it's got A, the beta 14 glycosidic bond, which is located essentially that connection between them. It looks a little odd. They got a funny shape right there. That bond we cannot break because we cannot break that bond. We cannot eat cellulose or at least get the energy out of it. So because we can't eat cellulose. This should give you an idea how some things are not digestible by humans and by extension, some things are not digestible by insects as well. So what happens? A lot of these sugars, about 50%, and I put about in quotes because it can vary. About 50% of the plant SAP sugars that are produced by photosynthesis down to the roots and exuded into the soil. This is part of the reason why we, we want a healthy plant is because the, the insect, I'm sorry, the plant is photosynthesizing. It's producing sugar as its main product of photosynthesis. And a lot of this stuff is being used by the leaves, the flowers, the stem, but it's also being sent down to the roots, in part to be used by the roots, but also in part to be exuded into the soil where it will then feed the microbes. So a healthy plant, and that's really what we're trying to, I'm trying to discuss here in relative detail, you have to understand that it needs to take care of itself above the soil, it needs to take care of itself below the soil, and it needs to help any of the microbes which are also going to help out the plant. So getting this sugar is important. And because getting the sugar is important, photosynthesis is important. And if photosynthesis is important, that means brix is important too, because that is in essence indirectly measuring the rate of photosynthesis in an indirect fashion by measuring the product. So this then brings us to my leaf brix chart. And these are generalized markers that if you're just starting out on brix or even if you're an established veteran, is that I want to be able to give you an idea that there are indicators as to what 5 Brixes versus an 11 Brix versus a 14 Brix. And you need to be able to differentiate what they are. So I've got four different levels here, which I do for clarity, even though you might say, well, there are 20 different levels and I do, it goes up to 20 brix plus. But in 99% of the cases, you're not going to break 20 on a leaf anyway. That's usually associated with the fruiting structures. And I'm not going to be discussing the fruiting structures during this presentation. I'm just focusing on the leaf. So the first stage is one to two. If you've got something between one to two bricks, force feeding is necessary. These plants will die. They will get picked off so quickly it will make your head spin. These plants are not healthy at all. And you can force feed them if you want to, if you want to continue to keep them alive, because if you don't do anything to them, they will die naturally or insects and disease will take them out very, very quickly. So for those of you who have ever played golf before, you've probably, you know, walked on grass that may be between one to two bricks, although it can get higher. But I'm just letting you know is that if you do not feed that grass on a regular basis, usually daily, is that there will be sufferers. There will be a lot of suffering. And so it is, it's a, it's an unfortunate situation, especially because so many of us enjoy golf. But I'm just letting you know that there, there are ways in order to keep one to two brix plants alive. And some people have learned how to do it very, very well. For those that are between, let's say three to seven, these have a fighting chance. Force feeding is not as necessary. You do need to feed them because they are not very good at taking care of themselves. They have a fighting chance. What do I mean by that? They will stand up, they will not necessarily fall over. They will be able to grow, they will be able to put out leaves. They will even be able to put out reproductive structures, which might be the fruits or the flowers, something like that. But they're not doing great. They've got a fighting chance, and we wish that they would be better. But the reason why I mentioned three to seven is because most of the plants that I've measured, not all 75% of the stuff that I'm measuring in agriculture is between 3 to 7. So most of our crops are running in that range, give or take. Obviously, it's common sense it's better to be at seven than it is three. But you get an idea is that these plants are struggling to make it, but sometimes they do need a little bit of help. And we're probably feeding them one or two times a week in order to keep them relatively healthy. This is part of the reason why things start to take off and why they are able to. The plant secondary metabolites increase a lot, right at around 6. What are the plant secondary metabolites? The plant secondary metabolites are molecules that give it color, they give it flavor, they give it taste, they give it smell. So anytime you are smelling and tasting or looking at a plant, these are all from the plant secondary metabolites, and they really take off at 6. When I say that they take off at 6, that means anything beneath that does not have an appreciable amount of plant secondary metabolites. Well, some of you might be saying, so what you're trying to tell us is that anything below 6 is tasteless. And I would say, yes, it is. Yes, it is. Many of the tomatoes that I have gotten at the store, the highest tomato I've ever gotten, I'm not talking about the small cherry tomatoes, but I'm talking about the bigger tomatoes, whether they be the vine ripened or otherwise. The highest I ever got was 5.2, and that's for a reproductive structure. So a lot of the tomatoes that I get at my store are relatively tasteless. Once you hit six, you can actually smell the tomato smell to it, just to kind of give you an idea. And so they really take off and increase by the time you get to 7, 8, and higher, whereas below that, the plant is just not able to produce enough plant secondary metabolites to make too much of a difference. Sword and shield, this is the next group. When you're between 8 to 12, you've got a sword and a shield, which means they are able to defend themselves. For the first time, water retention, wow, really be able to increase at this point. Your water usage will go down tremendously when you are between 8 to 12 because the plants have a lot of sugar, they're pulling a lot of that water, they're able to keep it in. And your sugar usage could go down 25, 50% or more when you're in this range. Insect resistance, serious insect resistance begins in this 8 to 12 range. That's important to know too. And I'll be talking a little bit more about that in just a second. And by the time you get to 12 and above, things are objectively healthy, the plant is objectively healthy, there is, there is no other indication. And no matter how you test it, you will find that there are healthy components all over it. This is where the cutoff comes from. So when you take a look at the Internet, you see the number 12 and this is kind of what it's alluding to. I prefer things to be at 14 or higher because it's a little bit safer. There's going to be some fluctuations in brix and the plants. So 14 is a little bit safer than 12, but this kind of gives you an idea that they are objectively healthy and when they are, you know, food is now produced, it is now fit for human consumption. When I say fit for human consumption means something that you can eat and that will contribute to longevity. In other words, long term health. You will have no insects and you will have no disease on any of these plants. And these plants are relatively rare in our landscape right now. Not in our landscape, I shouldn't say that, but mostly on many of the farms, sadly. So what do plants need in order to be high brix? Well, I'm going to state the obvious. It may not be that obvious, but sunshine, water, air and nutrients, that should be one of those oh duh moments. But I do need to point out sunshine because low light levels for these are going to be important in the visible and invisible radiation zones. And if you have high density planning, which is becoming very common nowadays, you have reduced the amount of sunshine and when you do that, you will be lowering the brix. So the high density planning is a potential problem that I have been seeing in regards to the brix levels, water levels, obviously. Two, if you don't have enough, the microbes can't swim. And if they can't swim, they're not going to be working to help your roots. If you have too much, the aerobic microbes will drown. The anaerobic microbes will take off and then you'll have a switch. This makes it difficult for the plant, too. The brix will go down again. Air, if you don't have enough, if you have compacted soil, if you have high mag soil, high magnesium soil, if you have a lot of water, a lot of rainfall, the air has been pushed out. And if you don't have air, the microbes can't breathe and they're not going to be working together too. And so obviously these situations call for lower brix readings, and they do result in lower brix readings. And finally, nutrients, which is again another obvious moment. But if you are missing nutrients, especially key nutrients, you will not be able to reach a high enough brix and you're going to keep reaching that ceiling and you won't be able to exceed it. Now, what contributes to lowering leaf brix? Well, there are several things that do that. One of them, and it's very measurable, are the pesticides. And it doesn't matter whether it's the insecticides, fungicides or the herbicides, they all have their role in reducing leaf brix because they kill the microbes. And we're in. We're having some issues. All right. Herbicides kill weeds, but the side effect is that they kill microbes. Fungicides, of course, they kill fungi, but the side effect is that they kill microbes. And the insecticides kill insects, but the side effect is that they kill microbes. What I'm trying to say here is you might say, well, you're trying to tell us that they kill microbes. Yes, I am. But they're also killing different microbes. The herbicides are killing their own specific types of microbes. Same thing with the fungicides and same thing with the insecticides. So if you're using all three on your field, reaching high brix becomes pretty much impossible, I have found, because everything is being compromised. And it gets much more complicated than herbicides, fungicides and insecticides, because we have many different types of insecticides. We have chlorinated hydrocarbons, which kill their own particular breed of microbes, as do the carbamates, as do the synthetic pyrethroids, as do the organophosphates, as do the neonicotinoids, sometimes called neonics, that are all doing their role in order to kill specific microbes. So if you are being told that you need to bring in three different insecticides and rotate them, spray one, and then a second one and a third one, and then rotate them through, you are doing a fantastic job of killing as many microbes in the soil that you can probably maybe realizing it for the first time, or maybe you knew this, but your plants are going to be suffering because of that. Another thing which almost always causes leaf brix to go down are the high salt fertilizers. Most of the classic NPK fertilizers, not the healthy stuff, but the high salt fertilizers, because they are in part high salt, are stressing the plant out and they force feed. So when you get a high salt fertilizer, it's kind of like electrocuting it and it will force feed. It can actually throw things into the plant due to raising the electrical conductivity of the soil, and it can cause a greening in the plant that usually sometimes does. But the plant is still stressed in the meantime, and within a week it's going to need another dosage and you're going to need to keep doing this because the plant then becomes dependent upon these high salt fertilizers rather than the natural way of getting it in. So these high salt fertilizers usually come in classic npk. They're usually not focusing on the micronutrients and just on those three. But I think hopefully all of us know that there's a lot more to farming than just NP and K. All right, GMO plants. I have found that the GMO plants are in trouble. They do not exhibit hybrix. I have not been able to get them up. And in order to get them up, you got to put a lot of money into that in order to get them up, because they are suffering. A lot of them are 5 and below. And so if you take a look at this chart that I have right here, obviously you know, you're trying to get to 12, and I'd prefer to get to 14. The problem is that GMOs, and maybe I'm unable to do so, and many of my agricultural consultants are unable to do so, but 10 is pretty much the maximum. So if you're dealing with a GMO plant, about 10 is about as high as you can go. And you will break the bank in order to get to that 10 as you were trying to struggle to get the proper nutrients in there in order to feed them. But generally speaking, they are in trouble. And this is an easy indicator to see because many of the GMO plants that I see are infested with insects. Soybean aphid. This is something you're familiar with if you have dealt with soybeans before. About 92% of the soybeans in this country Maybe a little bit higher now are now GMO. They were introduced in the United States in 1996. The soybean aphid was first discovered in the US and you cannot see it right now because it's off the screen, I think at least isn't on my screen. Was discovered in 1999. This does not mean the soybean aphid resurrected or suddenly became an entity. Before that it was always present, but it had to wait until the soybeans health went down to the point where it could actually start eating it. So aphis glycine came in in 1999, but it took, I believe, the GMO soybean in order to actually select for this particular pest. Strict no till. I put the strict in there for a reason. I'm talking about those non compromising no till situations such as I'm dealing with because I'm in Florida. What is a strict no T? Citrus is a strict no till. You're not going through it because you're going to be destroying the roots. Avocado is a strict no till. Tree nuts, strict no till. You're not going through those and messing them up again because of the roots. Apples, you know, a lot of the fruits, these are strictly no till where nobody goes in there and tills them. So when you're dealing with that strict situation and you combine it with number one, you're going to have some issues because we are unable to, especially in our citrus groves, we are unable to turn the soil over. And when you introduce the pesticides in there, you are now killing the microbes, as I demonstrated in an earlier slide. And the microbes are the only thing that will keep your nutrients in the zone. The zone that I'm referring to is in that healthy zone because they're trees. They're just not going to be in the first few inches. They can certainly go down to 6 inches, 12 inches or more. But they need to stay in the zone in order for the tree to get to them. And oftentimes they do not because the microbes are being killed. And therefore they are unable to overturn the soil and keep the nutrients where they are supposed to be. So the main nutrients for any plant is going to be hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen and oxygen. Those are the big ones, Chon. But there are other things that are, you can argue, just as important. They just don't find them in the same quantities. And one of the big ones is calcium. We all understand the importance of calcium. Or if you don't, you need to understand the importance of calcium, calcium is a big one. Without calcium, you are not going to be able to have a healthy plant. But take a look at the number. It's at 20. So it is 20 times heavier than hydrogen, and it is 2 1/2 times heavier than oxygen and obviously even more so with carbon and nitrogen. So when you have a heavy atom such as calcium, what is it going to do? If you don't have microbes moving the process, keeping things steady, keeping things in that zone, calcium will subject itself to gravity and calcium will fall. And especially in our. In our Florida soils, and we get a lot of leaching, A lot of the stuff passes through and we need the microbes in order to keep them up. And so it's difficult, especially because calcium is so heavy. But calcium is not even the heaviest one. We have manganese, we have iron, cobalt, nickel, copper and zinc, all of them even heavier than calcium and all of them subject to gravity. So if we are unable to keep those nutrients up into the zone, they will fall out and we'll need to keep putting these nutrients back on in order to feed the plant. So that's another situation where we see low brix occurring. The final situation is the greenhouse plants. Greenhouse plants, all plants grown in a greenhouse are UV deficient. This is another shocking statement that people have difficulty understanding. But if you understand electromagnetics, glass, and many of the plastics that are used for the roofs of them, they are about, give or take, 99% effective at absorbing UV. And UV does not get in. And UV is required for healthy plant growth. It's just not needed in the same amount. But it is fundamental. UV is fundamental to plant health. And so when you remove it, you have to compensate for this UV deficiency in order to get it in. So when you put it in a greenhouse, it. It's a different situation. There are some greenhouses I've seen where the roof can open up. And if the roof opens up and you have the sun overhead, they can get bathed in UV and you can keep it open for, you know, at least a half an hour, maybe a little bit longer, and they'll get a good dose of uv and they're going to do a lot better if they do that. If you don't, the plants will do everything they can in order to make their way out, in order to get to that uv, because UV is fundamental. It needs to be there. It's just found in low quantities. But still, just because it's low doesn't mean that it's not necessary. And part of the reason why I've Got a lot of things that have been adjusted right now in this right here. So you're probably not going to be able to read this too well, but. Amino acid residues, tryptophan, tyrosine and phenylalanine. Ultraviolet absorption is an important radiation absorbed by almost all proteins. We've done a lot of research with UV absorption and proteins in this laboratory, and there are four amino acid residues that accomplish this absorption, and they are tryptophan, tyrosine, phenylalanine, and to a lesser extent, the cysteine bridge. So that doesn't mean the cysteine residue. I'm just talking about the bridge. So you've got to have two cysteine residues in order to make a bridge. And then it's got a minimal amount of absorption in the UV range. But tryptophan is very high at 5600 and then it goes down to 1400 for tyrosine, down to 200 and finally down to 125. All the rest of the amino acids have very, very little UV absorption, but they all have their part in doing so. Glyphosate. Glyphosate kills plants by interfering with the synthesis of the essential amino acids tryptophan, tyrosine and phenylalanine. So you should be able to make the association between what I just talked about on the top versus that which is being talked about on the bottom, and that we are now dealing with a situation where not only is the glyphosate very effective at killing plants, but where we can actually do many different things in order to not necessarily kill plants, but at least compromise their health and make it difficult for them to survive. And so this now brings me to the last slide here, and in this last slide, what I want to do, I've now superimposed some groups of insects on this so that you can get a better idea of what brix levels these insects prefer to be on a plant. These are not Brix levels where they're on the plant. These are brix levels when they lose interest in the plant. The grasshoppers, they're the toughest I have found. Grasshoppers will take a bite out of your plant, even if it's a 12. So by the time you get to 10 to 12, Brix grasshoppers, Katy Tids, crickets, they lose interest in the plant. The plant is too healthy, it's too difficult to chew, it's too difficult to eat, it's indigestible, and they're going to start to lose interest by the time you get to 10 to 12. Once you get too low, they also lose interest because they need a certain level of health in order to survive. And grasshoppers are definitely the highest group I have found among the insects. The next lowest group, the chewing insects, they will leave a plant. Once that plant gets to between 9 to 11 based upon the chewing insect, whether it's chewing on your roots, whether it's chewing on the stem, whether it's chewing on a flower, chewing on the leaf, it doesn't matter. These chewing insects are able to tolerate a relatively high brix, but they lose interest by about 9 to 11. And so if you don't have any chewing insects on your plant, that kind of gives you an idea of what brix you're dealing with, because you're going to be dealing with something which is absolutely below 11 if it's a basic chewing insect and possibly probably below 9. The next group, the sucking insects. The sucking insects will lose interest in a plant between 7 to 9 brix. Not that they're found on the plant at that point, but they are always on a plant that's not below nine brix. Oftentimes they'll be below seven. And so if you've got leafhoppers, some of the bugs, the pentatomids, stink bugs attacking your plant, that means.