What is the brix level and why does it matter?
Anyone who spends time around vineyards, fruit trees, wheat fields, or other areas with crops have likely heard talk about brix levels all throughout the year. This unit of measurement is one of a handful used by farmers, brewers, wineries, and food industry professionals to compare sugar content between plants and acts as a key factor in determining ripeness of a crop or starch levels of the grain. Brix, sometimes written out as Degrees Brix or simply °Bx, is a measurement of the grams of sucrose (sugar) in a liquid solution as a percentage using specialized equipment. So, if brix levels can be used as a measurement of sugar concentration in a plant, then what does that actually say about the plant?
Every living thing has a metabolism, or a way to take in food and turn it into usable energy to perform all the functions needed to continue living. For humans, this is our digestive system and a number of large industries have been built up around tracking our food intake and monitoring how our bodies react, increasing or decreasing fat reserves and building muscles. Plants don’t take in these nutrients in quite the same way, instead they use a process called Photosynthesis. Here, plants take in carbon dioxide, water, sunlight, and minerals using their roots and outputs oxygen into the atmosphere and deposits sucrose for later use inside the plant. So, by measuring brix level, we’re actually getting a measurement of the energy stores inside the plant that are then either used in helping the plant grow larger, stronger, and healthier, or are available to be eaten and digested by a human for nutrients after a harvest.
For the vast majority of farmers and gardeners, the tried and true method of increasing overall brix levels is in careful monitoring of the sunlight, water, and soil for the plants. Water often comes easily as water can be provided through means ranging from high-tech irrigation systems on timers to the older method of just waiting for a good rainfall or using a watering can. As most people include sunlight levels as part of the process for checking if a plant will be suitable for their area, that leaves just the nutrients taken from the soil, often solved with the use of expensive fertilizers that replenish the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium used up over time.
The Problem with Fertilizers: Inorganic and Organic
There’s only so much that can be done with fertilizers to boost brix and the two major types of fertilizers each come with their own problems. Inorganic fertilizers can be specially made to suit a particular plant’s needs, work into the soil quickly, and are is far easier to spread in exact amounts over a large area. However, they’re often linked to environmental damage as runoff carries ammonia and the other chemicals into nearby rivers and streams while too much in one area can easily kill the plants instead of helping them, leaching into the groundwater and turning the soil toxic. The alternative is organic fertilizers, such as manure or compost. These fertilizers are the old school way, safer for the environment and better for long term soil life. They come with issues themselves; organic fertilizers increase nutrient levels in the soil (and brix levels in plants) slowly, are difficult and unpleasant to spread over large areas, don’t share the inorganic’s consistent spread of nutrients, and are effectively rotting organic waste. To further complicate the issue, organic fertilizers aren’t made in a factory like inorganic fertilizer, so the supply may not always be able to match the demand in time.
This presents a frustrating issue to anyone with plants to care for: what fertilizer to use? A large scale farmer may want to reduce his environmental footprint but can’t afford to risk trying a new fertilizer lacking the engineered focus towards his crops and get a lower crop yield. A family in the suburbs may start a compost pile for their garden only to realize the bad smelling pile won’t quite cover everything and their neighbors will complain about the smell if they use the fertilizer the ranch outside town sells. An owner of a greenhouse is thinking of moving to organic fertilizer, but her systems aren’t designed for them.
An Eco-Friendly Fertilizer
So, what if there was a way to avoid all those problems? Some middle ground between the effective, engineered inorganics and the eco-friendly, safe organics? This would be a fertilizer that could consistently match or improve on the effects of any fertilizer on the marker while being biodegradable and safe to touch like an organic fertilizer and as easy to supply as an inorganic fertilizer. However, conventional ways of adding the three critical nutrients also prevents any engineered fertilizer from being biodegradable as phosphorus and nitrogen are known as environmentally damaging. So, if the whole point of using fertilizer is to help the plants grow and generate more sugar and nutrients, then why not cut out the middleman?
Using Agri-Nano instead of typical fertilizer, NanoGreen Technologies has created a sprayable fertilizer proven to greatly increase brix levels while bypassing the need for adding to the nitrogen, phosphorus, and potassium levels in the soil. Instead, it assists the plant in photosynthesis to encourage higher levels of carbohydrate production, giving the plant access to more energy to grow and increasing the brix levels of the final harvest. Early users reported back higher yields with higher brix levels than they ever had before across the board. One farmer even reported that his soil was keeping about the same levels of nutrients with minimal supplements! By replacing your current fertilizer with Agri-Nano, you’ll get the best benefits of both types of fertilizers and far better results!