If You Are Using Chemical Fertilizers, How do these Affect Brix Meters results?

People today are more conscious about the nutrition content of the foods they eat. Farmers who are able to provide highly nutritious food will receive premium prices and have many repeat customers.

Farmers can have food labs test for the nutrition content of their produce. The nutrients of interest in such tests may include calcium, selenium, magnesium, iron and perhaps others. The only drawback is that testing costs money and the more elements tested, the higher the cost. A simpler and more inexpensive field test for nutrient content is the Brix meter reading on a plant's sap or juice.

Brix readings on plant juice/sap are a measure of something fundamental and unique to plants — photosynthesis. Plants are the only creatures on earth that use water and carbon dioxide with sunlight and chlorophyll to produce sugar. Everything harvested in the farm, every carton or ton of yield, originates from this sugar. But it is not only sugar that is found in brix; there are also vitamins, amino acids, and other nutrients.

The brix level is an accurate indicator of the nutrient density of a crop at the time the reading is taken. As a provider of food and promoter of health, the farmer needs to manage things to raise the brix value on the growing crop. Regular brix readings will give the farmer the chance to react — that is, to apply the fertility practices necessary to increase the brix reading (therefore, the nutrient value) of the crop.

According to Dr. Carey Reams, a renowned agricultural consultant who was the first to devise a reference index of "poor" to "excellent" brix readings for crop juices, it does not matter much to the plant where a nutrient comes from, i.e., whether the nitrogen, for example, is from an organic source or from chemical fertilisers. The important thing is that the nutrient applied in the fertiliser is the substance the plant needs at the time. If the chemical fertiliser has the nutrients the plant needs, the brix reading will rise. If the brix remains unaltered or falls, the substance is not the nutrient needed, or may be in an unusable form, or is detrimental to the plant.

It is important, according to Reams, that the farmer be methodical in applying the chemical fertilisers. It is not enough, for example, that the farmer simply scatters a certain number of pounds or tonnes of ammonium nitrate on a given area. He developed a method for calculating the exact amount of energy released by one molecule of ammonium, which could then be used to determine the amount of fertiliser to apply.

Reams' method helps farmers to avoid the common mistakes of conventional farming with chemical fertilisers, where excess amounts are likely to be applied which leads to waste and ground water contamination. But if too little is applied, the yield on the crop will be limited.

Brix readings will rise significantly when too much nitrogen-rich fertiliser is applied relative to the actual needs of the crop. But the pest-resistance phenomenon often observed in plants with high brix will not happen; the crop will attract a lot of pests instead. Plants high in nitrates have too many free amino acids circulating in their system, waiting to be synthesised into complete proteins. These free amino acids attract insects, which prefer them over complete proteins.

The farmer should target for brix readings of at least 12. The key to heavy crop yields is to ensure that nutrients are supplied in the right quantities and in the forms plants can use.