UV lighting to control pests?

Hayron1088

Hayron1088

Well-Known Member
So I’m watching a video and the owner of this company is selling a “ring light” that you attach to your pot and it has a specific uv spectrum that damaged insect dna much like our sun and our amazing full spectrum lighting of today. Is this effective? They claim using it for 60 seconds a day to combat or ultimately keep in controllable numbers. If so, could you just buy a uv light and treat your plants yourself? This product is on sale for $150!!! That’s $75 more than a 100 watt full spectrum led light that will grow some decent dank!!! Anyone know anything about this method?
 
013 said:
If UV light was able to eliminate insects then it seems we would be living in a pest free world….
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Certainly seems like we would, wouldn't it with the most powerful UV source blazing down on life on this planet.

If we go back to what @Hayron1088 said "They claim using it for 60 seconds a day to combat or ultimately keep in controllable numbers." we might be seeing the important point. As in "what are controllable numbers?". Probably the same numbers as if the grow was outside.;)

Outdoors the sunlight is blasting insects of all types and their numbers are controlled. Probably working fine for 100s of thousands of years. Then humans started farming and tried to control the numbers themselves. Farmers tried to kill off every insect eating their crop and the predators left since they had nothing to eat. The next crop eating insect came along and reproduced out of control since there were no predators.

Same sort of thing happens in our indoor grow areas. Start off with no predators and no insects eating/bothering our plants. If a predator comes into the house it will not hang around and breed new generations since there is nothing to eat. When the prey insect does show up it most likely will stay and breed till it is out of control since the predators are not there.

I have read about using UV for several years. The UV light companies do not say that the use of the UV will eliminate the numbers, just keep them in controllable numbers. As far as I can tell they have always made the claim of 'controllable numbers' and it is the gardeners that misinterpret, probably because they want to believe, that this means insect populations of zero.
 
Uv light has been successfully used by me and many others for control of algae in our water gardens. I do not know that it has ever been successful at insect control. Maybe. Control is not always elimination in professional circles, but limiting damages to acceptable levels and/or limiting the population of pest to low levels. It may warrant use for discouraging insects or to slow/inhibit their reproduction. I seldom knock something till I have tried it as described by the supporters. Maybe it can help reduce powdery mildew or some other living pest/disease. I may begin a trial in the near future.
 
Well I don’t want to get this deleted but the company is called intralight. If you go to there site they reference what part of the spectrum they use to do this operation. The gentleman that owns the company was featured on a podcast from one of my favorite growers. He talks about it briefly and how it works. Snake oil? I’m about to dive into some research on this and really see what is going on. He claims that it works… but doesn’t everyone trying to sell their own product?…
 
I was reading an article from 2015 and an entomologist states that uv light is used to kill insects. It “mutates the genetic code into nonsense” and also is used to sterilize safety hoods.
So here’s my number one question after reading two articles by entomologists, if I place uv light on the underside of my plants to kill pests will it not kill beneficial insects and mycorrhizae in my living soil? If you do your own research, it’s obviously possible to kill insects with uv light. Is it good for our plants? As the owner of the product in question states that he treats it once a day for sixty seconds… the more I think about this product the more confused I get :reading420magazine:
 
Hayron1088 said:
if I place uv light on the underside of my plants to kill pests will it not kill beneficial insects and mycorrhizae in my living soil?
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Would seem that way. Kind of hard to figure out how the light would be able to only have an effect on 'unwanted' insects.
 
It could be like spraying carbaryl on your garden and kill most everything, good microbes, bees, and bugs included. However, a tinfoil lid over your soil/reservoir might prevent much of that, if it is a problem. In water gardens the infected water is passed through a chamber exposed to UV light and it works on the algae. Maybe some flying pest could be controlled by intake fan passing the air through a UV chamber and filter. A lure might be effective as well. I could see this working on small flying pest that way and cleaning the air of fungus spores.
 
SmokingWings said:
Would seem that way. Kind of hard to figure out how the light would be able to only have an effect on 'unwanted' insects.
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The authors went on to show that blue light (467 nm) also had a lethal effect on fruit fly eggs. Any adults that survived the light treatment had greatly reduced lifespans and produced fewer eggs.

Similarly, other insects were killed by visible light, but at different wavelengths. The authors showed that pupae of the London Underground mosquito (Culex pipiens molestus) were killed by violet/indigo light (417 nm), while pupae of the confused flour beetle (Tribolium confusum) were killed by several different wavelengths of light, ranging from violet to blue.

The authors conclude that lethality due to visible light is wavelength-dependent and species-specific. In other words, some kinds of light kill some types of bugs, while other types of light kill other types of bugs. Additionally, previous research suggests that the insects are dying because blue light likely triggers the production of reactive oxygen species, which damage important cellular structures and molecules.

An obvious benefit from their research is that farmers could use this knowledge to kill certain species of pests, while leaving friendlier insects unharmed. It would also have the benefit of reducing pesticide use. The downside is that multiple wavelengths of light (and hence, multiple LEDs) would be required to kill all of the pests that threaten farmers. Thus, UVC light, the most lethal type of UV light, would be far more efficient at killing insects. However, UVC light itself has drawbacks, such as its indiscriminate killing of insects and toxicity to humans and other mammals.
 
CelestialNurseries said:
Uv lights have been used to kill bugs for years in places where they make deadly pathogens...don't want the zika virus mosquitos you're studying to escape!!
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The uv lights used in mosquito traps by our health dept. is to attract mosquitos, along with CO2. The UV light used in our lab was to aid in clearing the lab of pathogens.
 
Tennessee Tim said:
The uv lights used in mosquito traps by our health dept. is to attract mosquitos, along with CO2. The UV light used in our lab was to aid in clearing the lab of pathogens.
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Does UV light kill insects? What about other types of light?

Written by Joe Ballenger Ultraviolet light is pretty nasty stuff. It’s known to cause skin cancer in humans. UV light is a standard material for inducing mutations in lab experiments. It&#821…
askentomologists.com

A warning>>>https://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct...iosafety.pdf&usg=AOvVaw21zFO27uWhGYNbg0zWg85y
 

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