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

Dr. Thomas Dykstra, Laboratory Director of Dykstra Labs and AEA Scientific Advisor, is a trained entomologist with a vast background in agricultural consulting. For years, Tom has been illuminating farmers to the science behind insect pressure and demonstrating why insects do not—and cannot—attack healthy plants.

In our latest webinar, Dr. Dykstra sits down with John Kempf to explain what constitutes a healthy plant, the machinations of insect digestion, and how to use the Leaf Brix chart as a reference guide for any kind of pest pressure.

[AdvancingEcoAgriculture]

Hello! We appreciate all the discussion that has been centered around this webinar. After an internal review, we have decided to update the title to more accurately reflect the content of the webinar. While the original title was misleading, the content and information in Dr. Dysktra’s presentation remains accurate. Thank you for watching!

[Selfsufficientme]

This was a great presentation and being an organic home gardener (for a long time now) I can certainly vouch for the overall point that insects don't target healthy plants. So the healthier your plants are the less chance they will be eaten or the life sucked out of them. However, there is a group of insects that do target healthy plants and were not mentioned (I think) in this presentation and that is stinging fruit flies such as the Mediterranean and Queensland fruit flies not to be confused with fermentation fly which was detailed by Dr Thomas. Both of these insects sting unripe and ripening and ripe (just ready to pick) fruits like tomatoes, strawberries, mangoes, cucumbers, etc and lay an egg in the fruit which hatches into a maggot that eats and rots the fruit from the inside. This is a tough pest to control organically and often netting or bagging the fruit is the only way. Anyway, I thought I would mention this possible exception to the rule for interest's sake but apart from that from my experience I totally agree with the overall premise that healthy plants are much less likely to be targeted by pests and that's why I rarely ever need to use even a home remedy organic spray in our garden. Cheers :)

[chargermopar]

Some nonsense here too. Insects eat any plant they can digest. A healthy ECOSYSTEM is what keeps insects in smaller numbers. Many monoculture plants are more vigorous and healthy than their wild counterparts because they have no competition. I have seen sickly plants barely touched by pests while healthy ones were eaten- the tomato is a very good example. Hornworms thrive in healthy gardens but in gardens with plenty of birds and parasitic wasps the hornworms barely make a dent. In a pine forest only sick pine trees are eaten while the healthy ones fight them off. healthy trees have a network of fungi and bacteria that make it harder for the bugs to multiply. Sawflies tend to eat healthier trees but the birds in a healthy ecosystem eat them fast. My garden was plagued by june bugs for years, but once ducks settled in the june bugs are all but gone.
The measuement presented of how to determine plant health is something I have never seen before. Good information on soil bacteria, I have seen first hand how the use of herbicides destroys fertility. GMO crops always fail when in a wild environment if plants cannot breed they will become extinct. As a Floridian myself it is interesting how you explained why my bananas tast so different than store bought. Same with the tomatoes. My gardens have no weeds and have not for over 20 years. health soil and gardens do not allow weeds to exist it seems,

[phillrawrmckrackerlaken]

As a budding botanist I found this massively informative and helpful. I don’t usually like long and extended yt videos but I’m thankful I listened. I guess I’m that kinda of foolish yt viewer but not today! I feel upgraded through my listening thanks to you. Good job guys. My thanks are infinite.

[scottiehildebrandt]

I am a certified arborist. I planted 4 carolina cherry laurels in an identical fashion. None of them had shown any appreciable insect damage after about 4 months post-planting. I went on vacation and forgot to put the watering timer on. One of the four plants receives a bit more sunlight. All 4 were parched, but the one with more sunlight had significantly more scorched leaves. I saved them all, however for the next several months now the only one now showing insect damage is the one which had the worst scorching (i.e. greatest stress). They are all putting out new leaves since they scorched, but the new and surviving leaves on the less-scorched three show little to no insect damage. They are planted 5 about 10 feet apart in the same planter.

[CRHall-udmq]

Brilliant podcast, many thanks :-) I know from experience, every word of this is true. Even after 30 years experience as a gardener, it's great to be reminded and have my observations confirmed. There's too much misleading information about, encouraging people to look for quick but short term fixes that often prove to be more distructive long term. Observation, patience and dedication to care to learn from how nature works and working with it, gives long term solutions and success. Listening to such a well presented and in-depth analysis on this subject has taught me a great deal, for which I'm very grateful :-)

[spliffworks]

only just found this vid, as a avid gardener i had noticed insect went for not as healthy, but i was not aware that it had to do with the sugars, and never herd of brix, so thank you for posting this talk

[saltriverorchards]

The information found in this video is worth it’s weight in gold. Thank you so much for putting it together. I will use this info for caring for my orchard.

[rabbitcreative]

Sounds similar to Antoine Bechamp's notion that "bad germs" don't exist in a healthy body (healthy terrain). Cheers.

[jmfarms]

What about grasshoppers? They seem to like the green vegetation better. So do they only eat unhealthy plants or the healthy ones?

[GabrielPucinik]

I'm Brazilian and a work with 100% biologic farm and this video have good information

[winsomewife]

How about cabbage moth larvae? Do the moths never lay eggs in amazingly healthy broccoli & kale plants, kohlrabi, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, and of course cabbage?

[AntjeCobbett]

Thank you so much for this presentation! I've been growing fruit trees, vegetables, flowers and especially roses most of my life organically and only very occasionally had any problems. Neighbours comment on why my plants are not infested with bugs as I don't spray or add anything but natural fertilizer to them. Compacted soil. Yes. Thank you for pointing that out, I will keep an extra eye out for this. And finally I know now why my indoor plants in winter are not doing too great. UV. Oh, I'm learning all the time and I will be sure to watch ALL of the videos on this channel AND I will buy such a BRIX device for measuring. Thank you again so much! Greetings from Andalucia/Spain.

[inchristalone]

I have heard aphids are attracted to plants over fertilized with nitrogen.

[GS-nwdm]

Regarding fruit flies, in my home garden it is quite clear the fruit fly lay their eggs in both fruit approaching ripeness as well as ripe or over ripe fruit. They don’t limit their attack to over ripe fruit. This comment applies to tomatoes and peaches which is what I grow. I have often picked fruit just prior to them being fully ripe and have brought them inside to try and avoid fruit fly but still ended up with maggots in the fruit.

[dietrevich]

To truly prove this you would need to get a cultivar, variety or hybrid that's is known to be prone to insect attack and then by increasing its brix show that none will attack it, otherwise this is speculation and hypothesizing.
In my opinion and experience resistance is tied to genetics and genetic environment interaction. I've grown different varieties of corn, as many as 20 concurrently, and one can definitely see this effect when even sap analysis show them all to be in the same range. Some will have insect attack it, others won't and some would be in between.
In nature there ate very few things that are absolute, to issue a blanket statement such that "all insects " act and react to brix this way is to dismiss evolution. Insects and plants are constantly in an arms race to outcompete each other, which drives in part this evolutionary process. So genetics is a main contributor to this, the reason why as you said in natural landscape plants are not attacked overwhelmingly by insects, they have evolved with this insects and why invasive insect overwhelmingly attack them, they didn't coevolved with them.
Agricultural plants have not evolved in this scenario fighting off insects, instead have coevolved with us, and as such r have baby them as we would children protecting them and overriding their need to evolve defenses against insect and as such make them weaker which is in part what domestication entails, their dependence on us.
That's the difference between wild plants and crops, two very different upbringings. Same reason why a mutt is healthier than a breed dog.

[BonnieBlueA]

I am currently taking a Master Gardener course through my state University Extension Center. We have not touched upon ANY of this in either the entomology or the plant sections. Thank you for this valuable information.

[alanwong]

Ok. I got through to the Q & A section. After listening to the whole thing, I’ve gained an appreciation for the presentation. The info on brix (bricks(?) was edifying. I still have a problem w/ the phraseology that insects “Can’t” eat healthy plants. All you have to do is find one one and the argument goes out the window.Species on species predation is opportunistic. Just like I am sure, one can find perfectly healthy humans, you. Can also find a species like Ebola that can attack as this healthy individual has no defense against it, so can you find a perfectly healthy plant w/ a brix reading of 18 that that has no natural defense against and that invasive species can dominate and decimate the ecosystem. I can see though how important your indicator is in plant health in different parts of a plants life cycle.

[mindydiaz]

When I first planted my flowers from seed June bettles ate alot of them. They were perfectly healthy babies. When I turned off my yard lights they stopped. They grew back and spiders moved in now they don't get any damage 😂 the spiders eat all the bugs I love it. I do have some minor leaf miner damage though on a couple of leafs.

[iretonjeff]

I like how he thinks we should not play God; that seems to be a problem many people have, as though they have some right or duty to spray this or that poison for this or that reason but they don't actually know what they're talking about or what the consequences of their actions are beyond what they see themselves and point to.