permaculture

["Lawrence F. London, Jr." <venaurafarm@bellsouth.net>]

Go here and download these documents for further explanation of the 
relationship between plant sap Brix readings and plant nutritional 
quality, keeping quality and flavor and plant predator resistance.

http://realfoodcampaign.org/documents
Documents

This page contains links to general information pertinent to the Real 
Food Campaign.

    * Principles to Produce Nutrient Dense Crops This is the PDF 
version of the PowerPoint document that Director Dan Kittredge uses in 
workshops to farmers around the country. You will soon be able to 
purchase an audio file of him presenting this material to the Eco-Farm 
Conference in California.
http://realfoodcampaign.org/sites/default/files/PrinciplesToProduceNutrientDenseCrops.pdf
    * Refractive Index of Crop Juices A Brix chart that specifies the 
parameters for poor, average, good and excellent Brix for a large number 
of crops.
http://realfoodcampaign.org/sites/default/files/RefractiveIndexOfCropJuices.pdf
    * Nutrient Dense Crop Production Bibliography
http://realfoodcampaign.org/sites/default/files/NutrientDenseCropProductionBibliography.pdf

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [SANET-MG] Nutrient Dense Food: The Coming Market Standard 
| Real Food Campaign + REMINERALIZE THE EARTH - Home
Date: Tue, 11 Jan 2011 10:25:58 -0500
From: Michael Astera <michael.astera@GMAIL.COM>
To: SANET-MG@LISTS.IFAS.UFL.EDU

Brix is a measure of dissolved solids in a liquid.  It was
traditionally used to measure the sugar content of grape juice etc
when making wine and beer.  These days it is used to measure many
liquids using a refractometer, which looks like a short telescope with
a glass plate on one end.  A drop of juice or plant sap is placed on
the glass plate and then the refractometer is held up to a light
source and you read the Brix by looking through the eyepiece.

Grape growers use refractometers in the field to measure the
sweetness/ripeness of grapes but they can be used for any fruit or
vegetable.  There is a correlation between the nutritional quality of
a crop and its Brix reading.  It is not a one-to-one correlation but
as a general rule if a crop is grown in fertile soil with all of the
nutrients available it will have a higher Brix and higher levels of
vitamins and minerals than a crop grown in poor soil with a low Brix
reading.

Many factors other than sugars will raise refractometer Brix readings
such as dissolved vitamins and minerals or acids such as ascorbic acid
(vitamin C).

Some growers and agronomists claim that if a crop has a Brix reading
of 12* or above it will not be attacked by insects. There is also a
strong correlation between high Brix and keeping qualities, and a very
strong correlation between high Brix and flavor.  If you tasted a
tomato with a Brix of 2* or 3*, alongside a tomato with a Brix of 10*
you would likely buy the tomato that "Brixed" 10* because it would
taste much better.

The High Brix Project was started last year to find out if there is a
dependable link between high Brix and high nutrient content.  Project
members are growing crops in mineralized soil and comparing them with
the same crops grown in soil without mineral amendments; comparing the
Brix and then sending a crop sample in for laboratory testing for
mineral content.  Then we are comparing the lab results with the USDA
charts.  So far we are getting good results, with some crops showing 2
to 4 times the level of minerals shown in the USDA charts.

A web search for "brix vegetables" will bring up a lot of interesting info.

Here is a link to some blog entries that ended up starting the High
Brix Project:
http://thenewagriculture.blogspot.com/2009/11/part-i-problem.html

Michael Astera
http://soilminerals.com