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Hello plant people how are you guys doing today if you're new around here my name is Ashley and
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I'm a soil scientist on this channel I'd like to take that science and apply to all things plants
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and in today's video we're going to be talking about the little hairs on our tomatoes what
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exactly they are what the purpose is as well as what those little white bumps are and the difference
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between all of that and regular roots so I want to preface this video by saying I want to just
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knock I'm just attacking this with vengeance I want to get rid of the idea that the hairs
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turn into roots and i want to be the voice of reason behind that conversation so please share
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this video i did an entire blog post always citing the research and the papers that i looked at for
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this and i just want you guys to share it because i want the word to get out that hairs do not equal
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roots so these little tiny hairs that we see on the outsides of our tomatoes are actually called
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trichomes now i looked at a study on trichomes particular to tomatoes and i found one really
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interesting one done in 2020 where they looked at both the non-glandular and the glandular versions
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of trichomes just to determine what the purpose of each one served now they already knew that
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trichomes weren't roots this is literally just a garden myth that's persistent it's not a scientific
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community debate it just a fact that the trichomes are glandular and non glandular so the study looked at the density of the trichomes how many there were and where they were positioned on the plant and how those trichomes or density
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thereof based on species would then react to different stressors so one of the really interesting
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there's quite a few interesting ones that came out of this but the first one being that between
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the non-glandular and the glandular trichomes there are eight different types and so there's
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four different types of glandular and four different types of non-glandular now the non-glandular ones
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are actually the ones that we see kind of on the leaves and they become more predominant so that
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the tomato plant gets older whereas the glandular ones are actually kind of these ones that we see
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here and you actually as a garden scientist can see these visually with
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your eyes so glandular trichomes are really long and syndrical and they look
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really really hairy whereas the non glandular ones are short and stubby and
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they are a little bit firmer I find but for the most part that's what you see on
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these leaves they're just short stubs so the really long ones are the glandulars
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and the short stubby ones are the non glandulars the glandulars are what really
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scents and oils all of which can help with various different things from pest
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resistance or deterrents to her burberry deterrents as well as the non glandular
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can help with changes in heat as well as her burberry as well because it gives kind of a little bit of a tougher leaf or a less than ideal texture of leaf to consume so i just put this poor plant
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through an enormous amount of stress i'm gonna have to choose a different candidate for outdoor
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planting for the experiment because there's going to be some major transplant shock from this guy
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but i ran him under the tap and i got rid of all of the dirt so i'm going to try to do some close-ups
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on this my camera's not the best at close-ups but one thing you can note is
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there is hairs in between the adventitious roots also known as a root
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of primordia so the little pimples or lumps that you can get on tomato plant
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stands are roots and they actually come out from the paracynum cells in
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particular these are undifferentiated cells meaning they don't yet have a job
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role and they're being assigned that role based on environmental factors so
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higher levels of humidity darkness that sort of thing and in the case of where
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this plant was planted I did plant him a little deeper during his transplant and
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with that we ended up with some roots of primonia showing up and yeah so
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eventually they turn into a regular fibrous root system but they tend to not
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drill down deep like the primary root system does so the primary root system
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is this bulk down here and those do not come from paracrylum cells just the advantageous ones do So advantageous roots are the roots that become for the reason why we plant our plants deeper
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Now I was doing some research separately on just that, and I'm gonna do a separate video
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on whether or not you should even plant your tomatoes deep. I know that sounds like a really weird conversation
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because it's something that I do religiously. Turns out there may be some debate
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as to whether or not that's a good idea, but nonetheless, that's what we're looking at there
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So advantageous roots are different than primary root systems. Primary root systems dig down deep for water and nutrients
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Roots of primordia or advantageous roots just kind of branch out from the stem
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to help with support and some nutrient capture, some water capture. They're not going to dig like the typical taproot system
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we do see on a tomato and they are not hairs. They're completely separate
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They come from a completely separate area on the plant itself and the advantageous roots
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and the parachyton cells are plumbed directly into the xylem and phloem of the plant itself
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So I wanna thank you guys so much for watching. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to give it a thumbs up
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hit that subscribe button, comment down below if you knew the difference between the three anatomical features of a tomato
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Check out the article I wrote. It goes into much more depth as to what the heck's going on here
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And of course, share this video because I wanna, this out of the park
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I don't wanna, I don't want, I don't want anyone talking about hairs in tomatoes being ridden any longer
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I'm done with it. I'll talk to you guys next time. Bye
