General

Brix Refractometers and Why they take your Knowledge to Another Level

What is a Brix refractometer? In agriculture, it is mainly used in measuring the sugar content in fruits and vegetables. If you know the sugar content of your produce, you will also immediately know if your fruits and vegetables are of high quality. With this information, you can properly time your harvesting. This translates to a higher quality produce.

The benefits of using a Brix refractometer

In other words, a Brix refractometer can help you have a high quality produce during harvesting. Using this instrument is a cheap way to determine quickly the present quality of your fruits and vegetables. Instead of randomly picking a harvest time, a Brix refractometer can help you choose one that will correspond to better quality fruits and vegetables.

Why should you carefully choose a harvest time? The reason is that the sugar levels of the crops vary throughout the course of the day. There will be times when the sugar level is just half of the ideal. If you harvest during those times, you won’t get the crops with the highest possible quality.

Aside from choosing a proper harvest time, a Brix refractometer can also help you monitor the health of your plants. Even long before the harvest time, continuously monitoring the health of your plants will help you produce high-quality crops. With that continuous monitoring, you can make necessary adjustments that will make your plants healthier and your crops of higher quality.

How Brix refractometers work

Brix refractometers take advantage of the principle of refraction. It’s simply the bending of light as it passes through two different mediums (commonly water and air). The angle of that bending varies depending on the concentration and constitution of a solution.

Specifically, depending on the concentration of sugar in those fluids, you will get different Brix readings.

One degree Brix means there is one gram of sucrose for every 100 gram of solution. A higher reading means your plants and crops are healthy and of high quality. I also mentioned earlier that the sugar content of plants and crops varies throughout the day. As you make measurements throughout the day, you get different readings. You can properly time your harvest according to which measurements gave the optimal readings.

Checking the Sugar Content of Grape

How a Brix refractometer can help you

For example, you have a habit of harvesting early morning. You might need to change your schedule according to the readings you get from your Brix refractometer. If you consistently get very low readings during early morning, you might want to delay the harvest. You can harvest later when the readings are more favourable. This way, you can harvest crops with higher sugar content and better quality.

Earlier I commented about the monitoring of the health of your plants. When you maintain favourable Brix readings at each stage of the growth of the plants, pest and disease problems are less likely. The reason is having a consistently high sugar level of your plants means they are healthy. They are absorbing the nutrients and they efficiently use the carbon from the soil.

You can see that a Brix refractometer can help you both in the harvesting and monitoring your plants’ health. Both stages are important in ensuring you get a quality produce. You also prevent problems early on if you continuously monitor their health.

One common problem that occurs is during winter or very cold weather. Frost damage can ruin your plants and crops. This is common especially when the plants have a low sugar level. But if they maintain a high sugar level, there’s less tendency for frost damage. The reason is sugar lowers the freezing point. That serves as an added protection to your plants during a cold weather.

You can also make necessary adjustments according to the readings you get. For example, you consistently get low readings with your Brix refractometer. With that information, you can do further tests to determine what causes the problem. Maybe the soil has a lesser amount of nutrients than before. It could also be that you need to change the type of fertilizer you use on your plants.

Brix Refractometers and Why they take your Knowledge to Another Level 01

Once you determine the root of the problem, you can make the necessary adjustments long before the harvesting. This gives you enough time to improve the health of your plants and quality of your crops. You can reassess the methods you use and choose the ones that are most likely to deliver the best results.

Why should you have a Brix refractometer now

Whether or not the harvest time is near, a Brix refractometer can help you with your farming. If the harvest time is near, you can use the instrument to assess the quality of your crops. You can change the time of harvesting depending on the readings you see. You can choose the time that corresponds to favourable Brix readings.

If the harvest time is still far off, a Brix refractometer can also help you monitor the health of your plants. You can make necessary adjustments so you can improve the quality of your crops and the health of your plants. You’ll also be able to spot problems early on before they become costly or irreversible.

Those are the reasons why you should have a Brix refractometer now. It’s easy to use and it’s a quick way to monitor the health of your plants and crops. Get one if you want better yield, high-quality crops, and healthier plants.

One Comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Related Articles

Back to top button