Foliar formulation to lift Brix (continued from last month)
An appropriate foliar formulation will rapidly lift brix levels in your crop.
This understanding can serve to help determine the most suitable foliar spray at any given time.
Here’s how you can make this work for you.
You have a field of wheat and you know that it could be performing better. Something is missing and you can only guess what that missing link might be.
Your guesses can be far more informed if you do the following: using a hula hoop to represent one square metre, you can field test your theories.
One m2 is one 10,000th of a hectare. If you were intending to use 5 L per hectare of a liquid fertiliser, for example, that is 5000 mL per hectare or 0.5 mL per m2.
In this instance you would simply add that amount of the fertiliser to a little water, in a 500 mL spray bottle, and apply that to the area enclosed by the hula hoop.
You might use a similar process to deduce a suitable rate for other likely candidates on the trial area.
You might, for example, field test four possibilities in this fashion. Leave the treated areas for 60 minutes and then re-test the respective brix levels of the crops within the four hula hoops.
The formulation that delivers the best brix level increase within the allotted 60 minutes is the formula that will deliver the best response on your crop.
There may even be formulations in your field trials that will actually drop brix levels within that time frame. You will be thankful that you did not select these inputs to improve crop nutrition.
This technique offers immediate feedback to determine the most productive input at any given time and it can be a productive yield-building strategy.
Brix levels and storm warning
Brix levels can also offer a warning of damaging storm events.
Typically, the plant builds brix levels with photosynthesis throughout the day. At around 5 pm this process stops and soon after, the plant begins to pump sugars down to the roots and the beneficial organisms surrounding those roots. As a result, Brix levels will always be higher in the late afternoon than in the morning.
If you notice a sudden drop in brix levels outside of those times, it may be a warning of an impending storm.
It turns out that plants have a barometer-like capability that enables them to forecast a sudden change. If the brix level plummets at midday you might choose to batten down the hatches because trouble is brewing.
Brix levels should never fall during the day and if they do, it may be linked to a survival strategy. The plant ‘knows’ that a hail storm may strip all of its leaves, so it pumps down as much sugar as possible to the roots, as an energy reserve to fund the rebuilding process.
Unfortunately, this understanding is of little solace to the grower who is about to lose a season’s investment. There is usually not much we can do about a hail storm.
Brix and boron levels (continues next month)
See this article in Tree Fruit July 2015
