A little over a year ago I retired from the Plant Sciences Department at UC Davis, having served as a Superintendent of Agriculture for the Plant Sciences and Ornamental Horticulture Departments for over 26 years. Prior to that I was a commercial farmer of fresh market cucumbers, tomatoes, lettuce, and herbs for 8 years.
Heating sulfur in sulfur vaporizers at University greenhouses to generate sulfur dioxide is common. These sulfur generating devices were generally programmed to run for a couple of hours during the middle of the night, and by the time people showed up to work in the morning the greenhouses had ventilated and all had seemed good. They worked perfectly in preventing powdery mildews and rusts. After having battled powdery mildews in commercial greenhouses for so many years, I thought those sulfur vaporizers were the best things ever. It was too bad they weren’t legal for commercial growers, but that was no longer my problem. Years later I wasn’t nearly so crazy about them. They’d been responsible for at least three significant fires, relays had malfunctioned, leaving the sulfur vaporizers running constantly, and the units would leave a precipitate of sulfur on the greenhouse structure and glazing, which I now know were off gassing to sulfur dioxide. The alternative, though, would be to spray traditional fungicides every week of the year in every greenhouse. If we did that we’d be breeding super fungi resistant to every fungicide out there, and it would have required much more labor. There wasn’t a good alternative to the sulfur vaporizing units.
Finding a good alternative to the sulfur vaporizers is something I’ve milled over for many years. After retiring, I tinkered with a number of ideas, and came up with my product, All Phase, where I’ve formulated potassium sorbate, the trusted food preservative, into an effective pesticide for agriculture. It can be applied as a nightly fog and the active and inert ingredients don’t off gas into harmful compounds, and are common additives to many of the foods we eat. All Phase can also be used in commercial greenhouses, so not just the University can benefit. Potassium sorbate is proven to control a wide range of fungi and bacteria that contaminate our food, many of which are also plant pathogens. A 2019 study proved that All Phase is effective in controlling powdery mildew in Chardonnay grapevines, so the formulation really does bridge the gap between an effective food preservative and an effective agricultural pesticide.
Having worked with sulfur in greenhouses and fields, I only recently became aware of how elemental sulfur works as a pesticide. It sublimates to sulfur dioxide, one of the leading causes of occupational asthma. Even though I vented those greenhouses at UC Davis, all that precipitate was sublimating to sulfur dioxide while I and others were working in them. That asthma I developed (I’ve never smoked) might not have come out of nowhere. Even more recently I’ve seen a study coming out of UC Berkeley that shows that sulfur applications are negatively impacting the lungs of children living near farms where sulfur is frequently applied. It dawned on me that it’s not the sulfur affecting those kids, it’s sulfur dioxide, and it has to be affecting farm workers as well. It may even be affecting entire regions. It is now clear that responsible farming must use less sulfur. All Phase can help.
All Phase fungicide, bactericide and miticide draws from the bounty of the sea (patent on file with USPTO) to create a protective barrier over your crops. Alcohol is used to extract carrageenan from species of red algae harvested from farms in our world’s oceans. Carrageenan is used primarily in foods such as ice cream and yogurt as a thickening and emulsifying agent and to improve texture. In all phase carrageenan binds with sorbic acid, a strong anti-microbial, and dries to a protective film. The sorbic acid is formed when the potassium sorbate dissociates in water to potassium ions and sorbic acid. Potassium sorbate is added as a preservative to many of the foods we eat, stopping microbial growth and mycotoxin from accumulating. Not only can potassium sorbate keep our food safe, when formulated as it is in All Phase it can protect our crops as well. At Circadian Crop Sciences LLC we are empowering growers with safe and effective alternatives to conventional pesticides.
