Cian [00:00:02]:
What's up Gromies? Welcome to AROYA Office Hours Live, your one stop shop for cannabis cultivation education. I'm Cian Sullivan and I'm joined by our resident cultivation expert, Jason Van Leuven, with the amazing support of our producer Chris Ripley. Behind the scenes. And to all our live viewers out on YouTube and Instagram today, please let us know in the comments where you're watching from. And don't forget to smash the like button. Tell your friends about office hours and please leave a review to help our podcast Thrive Today we're going to dive a little bit deep into the new Royal Mobile application. I'm sure a lot of you guys have seen the new release that we put out here recently. We're going to be checking out how the mobile technology is revolutionary, revolutionizing our industry.

Cian [00:00:43]:
Sorry. And the way cultivators connect to their operations. We're also going to be addressing some good questions from our community, including a detailed follow up from one of our friends, Scott, about his thermal camera research and some complex cultivation challenges have been facing. Plus, we've got some inciting discussion about Far Red under canopy lighting and the controversial new 13 hour flowering light cycle theories that are floating around. Saw a few things out from Mammoth Lighting this week that have been discussing a new way to be able to increase your yields while maintaining a similar total flowering time by using a longer photo period than your normal. So we're going to get into a few interesting discussions today. I think the first one we're going to jump right into is the AROYA mobile app. So like I mentioned, we have a new mobile application that rolled out a couple weeks back that we have been iterating on pretty heavily the last few last few weeks and trying to get it to work nice and make sure that you guys have an app that we're proud of.

Cian [00:01:44]:
And I think we're at the point now where the application has gotten to a level of smoothness that we're pretty proud of and we want to show you guys the new features and how it works. So to get it started, here's the new dashboard that you're going to see when you first log into the mobile application. It's a little bit different than what we're used to. We've got some comments that the dials are a little bit smaller now. However, one thing I do really like is that the contrast colors these days are a lot brighter and give me a little bit of an easier time reading these specific numbers off of the gauges. The other thing I like is it's nice and Smooth. As I roll through the different gauges for the different rooms, it's very easy to be able to move back and forth and for me to be able to click into individual rooms to see all the different metrics that I'm looking for. And I really appreciate that it's starting to give a little bit more contrast and some highlighting because my eyes are a little bit rough.

Cian [00:02:48]:
So having an easier time viewing these metrics, making decisions on the fly, makes everyone's life a little bit easier. And I know I've had a couple people tell me that they appreciate the the new format just because they feel like they're able to see it a little bit better and get more information a little bit more quickly. One of the things that we've done in here is made a new menu drawer that's a little bit different than what you guys used to have. So now when you first log in, you're going to see the menu as just a couple icons here along the bottom you'll see home rooms, tasks, and then of course, our plus icon like you're used to. Under the plus icon, you'll be able to do all the same things you used to be able to do. Put in tasks, notes, an IPM application, a manual reading or a solace spot check direct to a specific graph. So there's a lot of different things in there that you'll find are not necessarily a complete overhaul, but look a lot different than you're used to seeing them. Even though the functional at its base is pretty much the same as you're used to.

Cian [00:03:54]:
You know, going into adding a task, you just get to select the task generic type and you can go in, add it to a room and then select a zone. Be able to add in, you know, title to that and what you're going to ask your crew to do. Add photos, add staff to that, and be able to have that all easily accessible through the mobile application. I think that's one of the things that we're most proud of recently is how much nicer the mobile tasking system has ended up for us. So that's going to be one of the big ones that we think is going to be very different for most people. You're also going to find that some of the things that you're used to seeing have moved a little bit. So some of the menu functions are a little bit different than they used to be. You'll find things like your devices now under that settings tab, which is another layer deep down past where it used to be.

Cian [00:04:54]:
However, now we also have this new feature that wasn't available on our mobile app before where you can go in and use activation on your mobile phone. So it used to be that you could only activate devices using our web application. You'd have to go in and log in through your web app to be able to get new devices activated to your network with the new mobile app. You can do that with any cell phone that is connected through the mobile app that has the proper permissions to do so. You can go in and you can activate new gateways to your system, or you can go in and activate individual batches of devices. If you buy an upgrade and get a few new things in the mail, this is going to be a huge help to people because it makes it so you don't have to necessarily use your laptop to go in and activate these devices the way we used to have them set. Some of the other things that are worth mentioning in here we've got a little bit of a nicer representation kind of the way we have our our notes section where you can input your IPM applications. And so this is going to be a little bit sleeker than it used to be.

Cian [00:06:15]:
It works a little bit faster and is going to be an easy way to be able to go through. Track your IPM applications, much more simple than it used to be, provided you have a pesticide list added into your facility and are able to go through and quickly grab the the applied pesticide that you're going to be using. All of those things will show up in your individual tabs. So if you have any notes or if you have any tasks or any IPM applications, you'll be able to instantly click into those sections from your menu and see all those things not just for yourself, but now for the whole facility wide should you have the permissions to see that.

Jason Van Leuven [00:07:01]:
One thing I think really excites me about the new mobile app is some of the ability to turn on Alert Preferences, Alert and Target range preferences. So if I think if you click on your query emblem up top there, you'll be able to open up and select which unit preferences or which target ranges and alerts that you are subscribed to. I think the unit preferences is also a new one here in the mobile app. So it got some cool features that have been added to the system.

Cian [00:07:39]:
It's really nice to be able to go through and manage this on the fly now on your mobile application without having to go into a web application to be able to manage which notifications you're going to be getting from which types of devices, whether that's, you know, notifications from specific data types or from different hardware. It's also, as Jason was saying, really nice to be able to go through and, you know, have, for example, your biometric authentication or a lot of these different features that are a little bit more streamlined in the new mobile app compared to the way they used to be. One of the other ones that I really like these days is that you can get a pretty good viewpoint now on your data without having to always throw your phone to landscape mode to be able to see your graphs in a way that it visually makes sense to you. I also appreciate the way the tables pull up when you tap the icons. Makes it a little bit easier for me to be able to discern a lot of these values really quickly. And then I also really like the way these gauges appear at the top these days. Makes it really simple for me to be able to see what I'm looking at. We also, just like always though, still have our traditional landscape mode that we can go to.

Cian [00:08:58]:
And I think it looks a little bit better these days too as well. So that's another one of those things. As you scroll across, you'll see the icons at the top, just like when you're in your portrait mode. However, you know, if you have multiple data types added into your graph now, you're going to see a couple more of those pop up and it's a little bit easier to be able to see them once you've got them all selected there. And so now if I go in and check, you'll see all those tiles appear across the top up here and I can scroll those tiles back across to be able to see any of the ones that are a little too far over to that right side and just makes it really easy for me to be able to tap through the graphs, available information and see what I'm looking for, the trends that I want to identify and the way things interact and then be able to pull up these metrics really quickly and then just pop into the next one that I need to without having to scroll very far or have anything reset on me. The smoothness of it, I think, is one of the things that I am most impressed with.

Jason Van Leuven [00:10:11]:
I think overall it's just a nice update. It's got a little bit cleaner lines in it and obviously available for both Android and for Apple and mobile devices. And then I believe on tablets as well. If you prefer a more simplified version of the web app. Tablets are good for either the web app or for the mobile version of the application here.

Cian [00:10:39]:
And I think anyone who's been with us for a long time can agree that the mobile app, though it was time tested, was well due for an update. I don't think that that's changed several years now. So I think it's really nice to be able to have a modern, updated experience that works a little bit more quickly, and that is something that we can lean more heavily on and hopefully expand on in the future a little bit more easily. So hope you guys enjoy the new mobile app out there. Let our support team know if you guys have any questions, comments, issues, or any feature requests for the new mobile app so that we can try to keep making it better for you. So now that we've gone through a little bit of talking about the new mobile stuff, kind of wanted to jump into a discussion that got brought to my attention the other day about far red spectrum use and at accelerating potential finishing times for certain cultivars. So, Jason, you will probably have a few more things than I know myself to say about this, but I've heard of a fair few people out there using, you know, just a few minutes of Far Red light right at the end of the. Right at the end of the.

Cian [00:12:10]:
Right at the end of the photo period every day. So essentially like 10, 15, sometimes a little bit more minutes of far red right at the very end of your photo period right after lights out. And the idea supposedly, is that it kind of catalyzes the plant into thinking that it's nighttime or like fast forwards the plant into more of a dormancy stage for its nighttime. Does that track with what you.

Jason Van Leuven [00:12:41]:
Yeah, it does, Jason. It's pretty cool. So, you know, we're thinking about some of those secondary metabolites that we've talked about quite a bit in the past. Anytime that we're mentioning, you know, light spectrum almost always try to bring up the, you know, the phytochromes and the cryptochromes and stuff. And this, this Far Red, specifically targeting those phytochromes out there in the, you know, that 700 plus range, I think you might go over a little bit of a breakdown on how this is working. But I think what's happening is the receptors and the pigments in the plant are reacting to this and basically signaling it to be in a more advanced state of cyanescence.

Cian [00:13:27]:
That's really interesting. I was fascinated to hear about it in part because it seems like some people are having the result of being able to kind of like, you Said fast forward into stages of senescence with plants that previously just really weren't able to be finished in shorter periods of time. And I know even on this show, I've said that it's really very difficult, if not impossible, to make a plant that is, or a cultivar that is not predisposed to flower and finish in a certain period of time to spread speed its processes up all that much. But surprisingly, and, you know, happy I am to be surprised in this particular instance, seeing that there may well be a path to do just that. And, you know, some of these less commercially viable strains that have kind of gotten set on the shelf or, you know, potentially not run for many years may be starting to come back around for us.

Jason Van Leuven [00:14:29]:
What a cool thing is take the opportunity to take less commercially viable strains that some of us have really enjoyed over the years and have the option to maybe be able to grow them at scale.

Cian [00:14:46]:
And at least maybe even mix them back into the genetic profile that you have within your facility. Right. Because, I mean, that's one of the things that I think I've been sad about over the last couple years is that with the purple candy craze, there's been kind of the narrowing of the genetic diversity that we have available to us in the industry. And I think it's really a positive turn for the industry to be able to start bringing back some of those genetic profiles that maybe weren't as commercially viable at the time, but that, you know, maybe have really unique flavor profiles or morphology that makes them really interesting and attractive in the bag that, you know, at the time, they just didn't have the right finishing time to really make it through the cuts of what was going to be able to be grown on a commercial scale. So any new tool that's coming out that's really, you know, substantially able to shorten the finishing window on some of those less viable strains, I think is just going to ultimately lead to, you know, a larger amount of genetic diversity within the industry. And I think, you know, bring back some of the things that a lot of the cultivators are really interested in, which is creating new unique cultivars and being able to help drive the taste preference of tomorrow.

Jason Van Leuven [00:16:08]:
I personally, I get the feeling that this is not going to be the last of the spectrum secrets that start to pop out. Obviously, historically in any type of cultivation, the ability to play with spectrum hasn't necessarily been a very prolific option. With the advancement of LEDs, with the advancement of controllers, with the advancement of being able to track growth and Break down what the chemicals are going on in there. There's other secondary metaboloids that are affecting these plants growth. I think as more research comes to target those, some of this is going to come to light. The cool thing about this Far red one is there's always been speculation like hbs, you know, I just get a little bit better flower and it's all right with LEDs, we've been trying to tailor it and get a little bit more of those spectrums out of it. And as we break it down into how this affects the plant, it really helps kind of utilize the flexibility of some of that spectrum tuning. So I think that, you know, it's been a number of years where we've always felt like there was something going on there and being able to utilize the science to explain it and take these first steps in a very viable way to utilize that as a cultivation trick, it's really exciting.

Jason Van Leuven [00:17:31]:
And I think there's probably going to be quite a bit more on tailoring this in and you know, building up strain specific spectrum profiles. The funny thing here is we always work with cultivators and some cultivators grow specific strains better than others. A lot of it is facility conditions come down to nutrient type stuff, what lights they're working with, some of their timeline and pruning activities. A lot of that allows one specific set of conditions for a strain to grow better than others. And the more that that gets documented, the better that everyone can get growing any of these strains. You're muted, big guy.

Cian [00:18:25]:
Thank you for that. I don't know, I think, I just think it's really exciting to see the evolution of our industry. Right. There are so many of these interesting techniques that are coming out now. Whether it's the use of far red or you know, modulating your photo period or adjusting nutrient profiles to specific levels to be able to best fit the cultivars that you're running. People are specializing these days. And I think one of the things that's really fun to watch in this industry is how people have gotten to a level of specialization that has allowed them to start keying in on some of these less obvious pieces of the puzzle. Right.

Cian [00:19:14]:
Because kind of like what you said, Jason, I think a lot of us over the years have kind of wondered, you know, what is the, the sauce in light spectrums that has been allowing the advancement to happen and what does make up the quality aspect that people talk about with an HPS spectrum versus what makes the yields bo with certain LEDs. And I think as the Next couple of years go by, I would imagine we find a lot of really interesting changes and a lot of new information coming out of the lighting sector of the industry.

Jason Van Leuven [00:19:57]:
Yeah, it's interesting that you bring up the photo period thing because I've heard a lot of people that play around with the photo periods. But on a day to day cultivation at large scale, it seems like 18Six is still the most common route for people to go. So I am going to stay quite tuned on the first large scale cultivation site that has an sop, breaks that down and makes that change that's been in stone for so many years.

Cian [00:20:37]:
I think it will be interesting to see kind of how that goes. I don't know anyone that's played on a commercial scale with elongating their photo period yet, but the results were interestingly compelling when, you know, left as a standalone side by side test. You know, I never like to necessarily, you know, tout specific brands or anything, so I don't know if anyone else but Mammoth Lighting has done a study like that yet. But it was interesting. They were looking like they were getting somewhere in the neighborhood of a 20% increase per plant in the study. And they had changed from a 1212 to a, to a 1311, which was an interesting change. And I think that the way they implemented it was a little bit different than doing that for the entire way through. If I remember, they did kind of a stepped program where weeks one through four they did 13 hours on and 11 hours off.

Cian [00:21:43]:
Then weeks five through eight they did a 1212 and then they might have even gone, I forget if they transitioned down to a 10:14 to finish everything. But essentially I think they're, their concept was try to mimic natural seasonal light patterns.

Jason Van Leuven [00:22:00]:
Yeah, very interesting. And you know, and as, as we all know, the, you know, the more photons that we can get this plant to utilize, typically the more plant mass that we're going to get out of there. So by, by giving it more light and getting a little bit more growth, hopefully we get a little bit larger amount of buds. And as with most stuff in agriculture, it's gonna have to be a trial and error game. There's no other way to determine this but to start playing around with it when we have this many variables at this rate. Okay, well, well now we're going at a different photo period based on the week of, of the plant's life cycle. So. All right, well how, how much do we manipulate that photo period and how much do we manipulate the timeline of that photo period as well?

Cian [00:22:51]:
It's really interesting too. I remember hearing people wanting to play with the idea of how close to their plants, they wanted their lights at different times, of the different times of the growth cycle to be able to kind of mimic that a little bit. But that idea has since kind of fallen away and I think this is the next iteration that I've come across. You see anything else like it? So, yeah, I'm not, not sure how it's going to go at a larger scale. I don't think there's been enough, enough studies yet confirming how that's going to go on commercial scale to be able to say for sure. But it's definitely an interesting finding showing that, you know, like, first that even that cannabis is going to flower and not go into a reveg by upping your, the amount of time your photo period happened. So it's, it's fascinating that they were able to do that without seeing many adverse side effects in there. Um, cause I've always been scared of trying to elongate my photoperiod burst.

Jason Van Leuven [00:24:09]:
Absolutely. They go too far. Some weird stuff's going to happen. And I'm pretty curious if they are also implementing some of this far red technology when they're doing that. We think about, typically in cannabis, it takes studies have shown about 45 minutes, say half hour to an hour to get up to full photosynthetic rates. And so even if we are on a 1212, that means, hey, we're missing some of this too. You know, ramping up and ramping down. If we can turn off, you know, our photosynthetic activity a little bit faster by utilizing far reds, well, maybe we can, you know, get, get that thing ramping up.

Jason Van Leuven [00:24:53]:
Yeah, sure, we're gonna lose a little bit there, but if we got extra hour of, you know, full photo period and we can turn it off just as quick, you know, maybe we can push that boundary a little bit farther, get ourselves a, a bit higher dli, you know, increase the amount of DLI with, without exceeding the PPFD that we can safely do so for specific plant.

Cian [00:25:17]:
I mean, it's fascinating, right, because I think that may be one of those next places people start kind of being able to push the boundaries and to see whether or not they're able to, like you said, push their yields a little bit without fearing the adverse consequences of elongating that photo period like we've all been trained to be scared of in the past. If that is a viable strategy to be able to increase your, your total plant mass in the room. And thereby, you know, if you're growing really quality product, increase the total amount of quality viable product you produce. I think that that's a, a huge advancement for us because, you know, we're, I mean, I don't want to jinx us because I'm always surprised at the yields people keep pulling down. They just seem to get bigger and bigger and bigger. But you know, there aren't that many things that I find out there these days that are capable of pushing the yields that much higher on a quality consistent basis. And if this is a method that starts to be able to be proven to be viable on a commercial scale, I think that that's incredible and one of the most interesting advancements I've seen people go towards. Mostly because if you already have spectrum tunable technology, this may well be the type of thing that is already attainable to your particular facility.

Cian [00:26:58]:
Right. Like if you've got far red spectrum tuning capabilities in your facility, essentially trying that doesn't necessarily take any major retrofit, which is also fascinating too.

Jason Van Leuven [00:27:11]:
Yeah. You know, another thing is I, I think that even if you wanted to do a retrofit, since we're looking at some, you know, pretty low intensities of far red, you know, when it comes down to it, it may, may be a more cost effective option than, than some other routes. And on a daily basis, you and I work with quite a few clients that, you know, they've got certain aspects of their operation and their facility really, really well dialed in. Right. We got some clients that are keyed in on, you know, nutrient balance and doing a great job either getting custom blends or just staying on top of nutrient analysis and, and all that stuff. We got certain clients that are doing, you know, an awesome job with plant work, some guys that, that are pushed into the next level of technology. And I think when we get excited about what type of options our clients can utilize, this, this is looking like a promising option.

Cian [00:28:11]:
I think that's a key operative phrase. Right. It's looking like it's promising. And I think the earliest opportunity, I'm going to give it a shot and see if I can try and test these theories myself. But if anyone does have the predisposition to go out there and try it themselves, write us and let us know how it goes. Because I am fascinated to see as people start to, you know, pull down more runs where they experiment with these types of things, where the science leads us. Well, I think the next one I wanted to talk about, we wanted to touch back on a follow up to something we talked about in a previous episode from are one of our cultivators that I talk to on a regular basis. So we previously talked about Scott's want to put thermal cameras in and see, you know, why, why we don't track thermal camera imaging currently in the application.

Cian [00:29:14]:
And so here's kind of the follow up challenge from Scott. I've recently been struggling with maintaining momentum after transplant. And then again in the transition into flower rooms, it's not uncommon to be bringing light intensity up incrementally, but then noticing yellowing and then going back down on ppfd. However, I know I'm missing out on growth potential as a result of doing that. And I'm not sure if you kind of remember what was going on with Scott's talk about the thermal cameras last time, Jason, but I essentially it sounds like he's been running that and finding that it's difficult to track, track a lot of his, his leaf surface temperatures in a way that makes him a good bunch of actionable data. Right. Which I think, you know, part of that is kind of what he's outlining here is his struggling being able to transition rooms after transplant. Which, I mean, that's something you and I talk to people a fair bit about.

Jason Van Leuven [00:30:25]:
Yeah. And you know, there's, there could be so many things going on here. I remember kind of showing the diagrams on, on how to get cross sectionals of leaf area and stuff. Obviously out there on the market there's been a number of room monitoring systems that did track those, those thermal images. And we're actually a good way of looking at plants that were having difficulty with enough transpiration. Obviously less transpiration from leaf typically is going to be a hotter leaf. Right. So not only finding, you know, room uniformity issues as far as H Vac stuff, but also could help people identify pest pressures.

Jason Van Leuven [00:31:03]:
You know, if they're starting to see some, some lack of transpiration because of predation on certain leaves, that type of thing. It's, it's a really cool technology. Obviously when we start playing with going from one light source to another light source, our DLI matching is kind of just a rough approximation. And this is a great continuation when we're talking about effects of light spectrum because the total energy out of there is going to be related to those wavelengths. How the plant responds as far as biological activity, how the cells are responding is 100% related to the spectrum and the intensity. So you know, when we talk about DLI matching and maybe that's one of the things that he's running into here is obviously HPS is typically got a little bit more infrared going on there as well as other spectrum. It's typically just usually a more flat spectrum. So when I had my whiteboards going on here or I could screen share but you know, when we look at HPS is usually we get a peak up in the, that yellow orange range, whereas LEDs, a lot of times they're, you know, we're seeing more peaks and then that's how we're getting to that white.

Jason Van Leuven [00:32:23]:
So yeah, I don't know if. Are we trying to give him, Scott, a bunch more, more answers to dig into here or.

Cian [00:32:33]:
No, I think, you know, I think maybe just breaking down a little bit of what happens when you hit these walls when you're transition ways that it's, you know, common that we talk to people about how to avoid those pitfalls. I know for me, transitioning in, you know, from a similar light source to a similar light source is a big one for me. So if I can be vegging under HPS or a CMH and going into a HPS room oftentimes I'm going to have a little bit less of that, that transition syndrome or the slowdown, if you will, after you transition. And I know you've talked in the past, Jason, about trying to, like you said, match DLI from one stage to the next and how important that can be at trying to make sure you avoid those, those transitionary slowdowns.

Jason Van Leuven [00:33:31]:
Yeah, I mean when, when we think about it, getting the same amount of the energy to the plant is, is critical to avoid any slowdowns. You know, when we think about what are the stressors during that transplant, you know, environmental changes, you know, even small environmental changes, your flower room is never going to be exactly the same as your veggie. Even if we push really hard to get those environments matched. You know, root zone stuff's probably not going to be pushing much stressors on that plant. It's, it's going to be really happy to root into a new media. So the next thing really is think about, all right, light. And obviously by, by matching that dli, we're getting the same amount of energy. Historically thinking, we always thought, oh well, we want to be at the same PPFD because, you know, we don't want to stress the plants out.

Jason Van Leuven [00:34:17]:
And yeah, there is a little bit of truth to that. Right. You know, those photoreceptors in the plant are slightly conditioned, but with cannabis, they, they are very light, hungry plants when we think about it. And, and most of the time, we can get away with upping that ppfd right when we get to flower, in order to match that same amount of photons, the same amount of energy getting to the plant that the plant needs to synthesize at the rate that it was photosynthesizing, otherwise we are going to see a slowdown in plant growth.

Cian [00:34:55]:
So the last thing that Scott had in his questions to us was kind of an unrelated manner, but had to do with brix levels. And I know we've both kind of said that's not necessarily one of the things I think you or I have the most knowledge and awareness around. However, it's kind of an interesting question that Scott asked. So he was saying that he keeps hearing industry claims that a 10% sugar content is required before pushing plants. But Scott can't quite find Brix levels above 5%, even on healthy plants that he's got in his rooms. And I think his question is related to, is this specifically related to EC stacking in his root zone or not? And so kind of go over what this question's about again. So Brix levels are a measure of the sugar content of the sucrose and the SAP expressed as a percentage by weight. The.

Cian [00:35:58]:
I want to say it's usually measured with a refractometer. Is that right?

Jason Van Leuven [00:36:01]:
Yeah, it's.

Cian [00:36:02]:
Jason.

Jason Van Leuven [00:36:03]:
The simple ones are a little spoon that you get a look through, basically. Yeah. And that's. That's what they call them, a refractometer.

Cian [00:36:15]:
I think. So usually came out of, like, viticulture and like. Like table grapes originally paying attention to brix levels to be able to determine harvest timing and maybe, like, the quality of the grapes. But it's a relatively unexplored concept, I'll say, in cannabis. It's something at least that you don't hear quite as much of these days. So I'm not quite sure where the 10% threshold comes from. That one's always a little bit interesting to me, trying to look down, you know, who's saying that and where it's coming from. But do you know anything much about that, Jason? I always kind of want to toss things off you like that because it's.

Cian [00:37:16]:
It's an interesting claim that there has to be 10% be able to push your plants in an aggressive way.

Jason Van Leuven [00:37:24]:
Yeah. So back in 2018, and when we were building out the AROYA product, some of the. The cultivators we were working with were looking at bricks and same kind of thing back then where, I don't know that anyone had a lot of good data on how they were utilizing that. You know, when we do think about what's going on biochemically in the plant, obviously, you know, brix being a sugar level plants using sucrose as a feed, usually higher brix levels is something that we are shooting for. To answer Scott's question about, you know, higher ecs causing lower brix levels, I would think probably not related and, or you know, inverse, really inverse related. You know, we need to be supplying a really good nutritional level to the plant in order for it to, to process our, our anions and cations into, you know, sucrose and other plant digestible products.

Cian [00:38:33]:
I've always kind of heard the.

Jason Van Leuven [00:38:38]:
The.

Cian [00:38:38]:
Claim that higher brix levels equate to higher yields. What do you think about that?

Jason Van Leuven [00:38:44]:
I mean, quite possibly could be right. When we're thinking about, you know, what's available for this plant to turn into, you know, matter into to plant weight, that availability obviously would be a good thing, indicating if the plant is struggling to produce as as much of that, then there's a good chance it could be a reducing factor in the potential weight of it. I think there's also been some, some information out there that higher brix levels reduce the ability for pests to eat on the plant. And that could be basically one of those things that we look at where it says, all right, unhealthy plants are more susceptible to pest pressures. I don't know if that's that if that statement has always been on multiscale or if it's just related to the brix levels as well.

Cian [00:39:44]:
Yeah, hard to say. Kind of a dicken on the egg conversation, right? Did the brix levels being low cause the plant to be more pathogen susceptible or did that happen kind of after the fact, like the plant health decreased the brix levels and also was getting poor and as a result of that decrease in plant health, the plant was more susceptible.

Jason Van Leuven [00:40:16]:
We'll have to dig in on brix a little bit because it's been a number of years since I paid much attention to it. But as anything is as we're pushing the levels of production, trying to get as efficient and, and proficient of cultivation as possible. Any of those check marks that we can put on the list is a helpful baseline for building the best plants.

Cian [00:40:43]:
Yeah, I think, you know, also if anyone watching has any experience in tracking and monitoring brix levels and what you're seeing on a regular basis, I'd be fascinated to know. Send in any data, any studies that you guys are reading out there on it because I think there's not enough out there for me to really weigh in on whether tracking brix levels is going to equate to a, a big positive, you know, increase in your yield or quality. Because the one thing I've always kind of wondered about that is that it, even though brix is a measure of the, the sucrose, which essentially is going to be a building block for that plant to be able to produce more plant matter, the other thing I always kind of wonder is that, you know, sucrose as a measure of final plant quality and maturity in something like grapes makes a lot of sense to me because it's a sugar crop. The fruit that comes from that is a, is a sugar bearing fruit. What we're trying to increase in cannabis is resin production moreover than, than just sugar production. So even though there should be some sort of a correlation there, I always have kind of wondered whether or not there is something that we can really draw as like a rule of thumb to help people understand those numbers.

Jason Van Leuven [00:42:05]:
Yeah. And you know, is this something that we want in the flower? Right. So when we always talk about the white ash, black ash thing, I guarantee you sucrose or sucrose sugar levels in the flower itself is going to be one of those contributors to black ash. And so it's like, all right, at what point do we want hybrix levels and at what point do we want the plant to be consuming it and converting it into, you know, smokable friendly chemicals?

Cian [00:42:35]:
I think that's a really good point. And I mean, you know, that's one of the things we just don't have enough information on the numbers of brix levels throughout runs to be able to have solid guidelines to offer people through here. Really interesting though. I mean, 5% does seem like a, a lower range than what you're seeing in a lot of other places. I wish I had a little bit more, a little more knowledge on bricks to understand whether or not that was as low as it seems or whether or not that was a little bit more of a normal and acceptable level for cannabis plants. But yeah, unless you have some more information on that, I don't think I have too much more to add.

Jason Van Leuven [00:43:24]:
Oh, it's quick, quick AI chat on, on bricks levels is indicating saying, hey, that less than 12% indicates plants either immature deficient in a critical nutrient 12 to 15 is healthy and desirable for mature plants, 15 plus considered excellent, demonstrating peak metabolic function. And then. Yeah, that's right. Well I'll have to dig in. Frontiers End is one of my favorite scientific journals to get in on this stuff. And you know, sure it talked about utilizing resources. AI is a great way to find okay information fast and get a broad spectrum of it. That being said, it's not always vetted and that's why I also love digging in on scientific journals.

Jason Van Leuven [00:44:24]:
I think I've mentioned it quite a few times before, but Frontiers in is one of my favorite places to find hard, hard scientific experiments where they have graphs and resources and all of that type of stuff as far as what can probably be held as truth.

Cian [00:44:46]:
Research Gate as well, another great resource on that realm. I did look for some resources to research Gate about Brix levels, although most of what I found was related to wine and table grade grapes. Well, the couple things that I wanted to mention on here before we get too far is want to have people, if you got any questions on some of these types of concepts, or if there's things that you'd like us to talk about on office hours that we haven't gone over in the last few rounds, shoot us messages on Instagram, shoot them to YouTube. We're always looking for a little bit more.