Ozonated
Water: Vineyard Pest Control Without Chemicals
Until recently, the prospect of a grape growing
industry in the Midwest without the use of chemicals may have seemed
impossible. Throughout our region, insects, plant diseases and weeds
thrive in the summer heat and humidity. Many grape growers say that without
agricultural chemicals, they could not produce a consistent crop.
But some winemakers say the widespread reliance on
chemicals has downsides for vineyards. In Kansas, David Sollo
of Grace Hill Winery says chemicals destroy the microbiological life
in soils. “They applied herbicides and pesticides for years and so the
soil here is sterile!” he says, “There are no microorganisms to help plants
absorb nutrients.”
While regulators consider approved agricultural
chemicals safe if used properly, many widely used herbicides, fungicides
and pesticides can carry risks and drawbacks, especially with repeated use or
misuse.
“They
put on herbicides and pesticides for years and so the soil is sterile!”
David Sollo, Grace Hill
Winery, Kansas
For example, copper fungicides can be effective against powdery
mildew; however, care must be taken due to the danger of foliage injury
resulting from phytotoxicity. Some Midwestern grape growers also use fungicides
with the active ingredient Mancozeb. One problem with Mancozeb is
that it cannot be applied within 66 days of harvest.
According to the University of Illinois, there is
also concern about fungicide resistance. Strobilurin fungicides are known by
scientists to have a moderate to high risk for development of resistance if
used improperly.
There can be health risks for farmers who apply
chemicals. Ethyl Mercaptan fungicides are effective for downy mildew, but
they have a four-day re-entry restriction after spraying. And the Captan brand
fungicide label pulls no punches: “Do not allow persons to enter treated
areas within four days following application unless a long-sleeved shirt
and long pants or a coverall that covers all parts of the body except the
head, hands, and feet, and chemically resistant gloves are worn.”
Popular carbaryl based pesticides have been known to
cause,”burns from direct skin or eye contact, nausea, stomach cramps, diarrhea,
and excessive salivation through inhalation or ingestion,” according to the
Toxicology Network.
Some studies link pesticide exposure to higher rates
of diseases among farmers. For example, a study by researchers from
the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS), ‘Incident
Diabetes and Pesticide Exposure Among Licensed Pesticide Applicators:
Agricultural Health Study 1993 – 2003′, linked specific pesticides
with an up to 200% increased risk of diabetes.
Another indication of the health risks: the ‘Midwest
Small Fruit & Grape Spray Guide 2012,’ edited by Purdue University’s
Bruce Bordelon with Mike Ellis and Celeste Welty from Ohio State
University, has very strict handling instructions for all pesticide
chemicals: ”Use an adequate respirator and protective clothing, especially
when mixing pesticides.”
Another recommendation in the same document reads: “For maximum
safety, get an appropriate blood test before the season starts and test
periodically during the season.”
Not all vineyards in the Midwest follow these
guidelines, but many do. For example, workers at one of the region’s bigger
wine makers, Les Bourgeois Vineyards, always use spray-suits with respirators
when applying pesticides and fungicides. Each barn on the property has a
station for workers to wash down after chemicals have been applied.
Enter Ernie Wilmink, a very tall Dutchman with a
presence and manner reminiscent of Arnold Schwarzenegger.
A consultant in ozone technology for more than four
decades, Wilmink says wineries and vineyards can drastically reduce chemicals
with ozogation; using an ozonated water spray to disinfect their wineries and
control vineyard pests. The ingredients that produce this aqueous ozone
spray are very simple: “The only thing that I use,” says Wilmink, “is
electricity and the air we breathe.”
At wine industry conferences across the Midwest,
Wilmink’s brightly painted AgriOzein trailer is often seen in parking lots. In
fact, Wilmink says during the last year he’s traveled over 10,000 miles,
attending six wine conferences to give talks on ozogation and sell the
apparatus that performs it.
On trade show floors, his yellow-tanked spraying
machine – or Multifunction Mobile Ozone System – sat on its trailer. Echoing
the famous former Californian governor, he calls this his “ozonator.”
Ozogation, Wilmink says, is a “thunderstorm in a box.”
That’s because his process for making ozone is similar
to lightening during a thunderstorm. In fact, the clean odor after a
thunderstorm is caused by lightening passing through the atmosphere and forming
ozone.
“The
only thing that I use,” says Wilmink, “is electricity and the air we breathe.”
The AgriOzein technology is relatively simple and uses
only pure oxygen says Wilmink. First, the ozonator separates air into nitrogen
and oxygen under pressure using a technology called Pressure Swing Absorption
(PSA). Then, inside the metal box, an electrical discharge converts the
oxygen gas into pure oxygen, a three atom molecule called 03 or ozone. This
three atom molecule is much less stable that the two atom oxygen we breath
and doesn’t last very long before reverting to the same oxygen found in air.
According to the results of ozone decay experiments by
Christopher Weilandics published in Holland in 1988, the half-life of ozone is
37 minutes. This duration is often quoted by ozone products
companies. During its short life, ozone’s powerful oxidation properties make
it a good disinfectant and, according to Wilmink, a lethal killer of vineyard
pests.
During the recent Kansas Grape Growers Conference in
Topeka, Wilmink elaborated on what he thinks it can do for a vineyard: “Compare
it with chlorine for example. Ozone is five thousand times faster in
killing bacteria than chlorine and has no by-products, it’s just pure nature.
So when you combine it into water, it has a half-life of about 25 minutes and
everything issues back to oxygen.” He continues, “As soon as you spray it
over these vines, it takes a fraction of a second to take care of the disease
or insects that are there.”
Ozonation kills these pests through cellular lysing, a
biological process of destroying a cell’s walls by oxidising its enzymes, proteins, DNA and RNA. Many studies have documented this oxidation
process.
For example, according to a 2011 study by M. N. Rojas-Valencia
from the National Autonomous University of Mexico, “Owing to its oxidizing properties, ozone is currently known as one of the
most efficient and fastest microbicides. The evidence has shown that it
can break cell membrane or protoplasm, making it impossible to
activate bacteria, virus and protozoa cells while removing up to 99% of
bacteria and viruses at 10 mg/l in 10 minutes.”
Wilmink says ozogation is a completely clean
technology capable of killing any sort of vineyard bug and can totally replace
the use of pesticides. “Beetles to powdery mildew, there is nothing that can
withstand the strength of ozone technology,” says Wilmink.
He says his multifunction unit is a turn-key operation
– all you need is water in the tank and gas in the generator and 15 minutes
later you are spraying.
It might sound too good to be true, but the Dutchman
is supported by Professors Max McFarland and Paul Read from the University of
Nebraska, Lincoln. For all three men, this venture is about more than turning a
profit and providing an alternative to chemicals, it’s about moving the wine
industry towards a greener future.
“…it takes a
fraction of a second to take care of the disease or insects that are there.”
Ernie Wilmink, President,
AgriOzein, Consultants in Ozone Technology
Wilmink says there are about 40 wineries that use his
equipment inside their wineries to sanitize their equipment and at least seven
are now using it in the vineyard too.
The first significant trials of the technology on
vineyards were completed last year at Mac’s Creek Winery & Vineyards in
Nebraska. According to the test results on dozens of Marechal Foch vines
divided into three groups, by the end of last September, only 2% of the vines
that were ozogated during 2012 showed any sign of insects. That compared with
38% of vines in a second, control sample, and, interestingly, 93% of vines in a
third group to which a chemical was applied. The ozogated vines also did better
controlling diseases during the season, but by the end of the growing season,
disease pressure on all three groups was about the same.
However, last year was particularly dry and disease
and insect pressure was not typical. Professor McFarland is impressed with the
results so far, but wants to do further ozone testing in wetter, more ‘normal’
seasonal conditions.
Wilmink says he has all the approvals required by the
US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and the US Environmental Protection
Agency (US EPA) for ozogation to be used both inside wineries and on
grapevines. However the two federal regulators appear confused about how their
respective regulations pertain to ozone use in agriculture.
The common use of ozogation as a winery sanitizer is
not an issue. Dennis Edwards, Branch Chief in the Antimicrobial Division
of the US EPA confirmed that the ozonator device does not need to be
registered. However, using the process on crops, like grapes, means
ozogation may need to satisfy more regulations, depending on how it is defined.
According to FIFRA (Federal Insecticide, Fungicide,
and Rodenticide Act), a pesticide is “any substance or mixture of
substances intended for preventing, destroying, repelling, or mitigating
any pest.” Under the FFDCA (Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act) there are
exclusions from the above definition but not if the substance – in this case
the ozonated water – is used on a raw agricultural
commodity, or, “The substance is applied in the field.”
In an email response to questions, the US EPA media
office said, “ozone is a pesticide” when produced by a “pesticidal device” like
the one Wilmink uses.
So if ozome is a pesticide, some viticulture experts
say Wilmink needs to submit residue tolerance and residual data
information to the EPA so it can decide whether or not to approve this new
application of ozonated water in the vineyard. Wilmink says
the Pesticide Bureau at the Iowa Department of Agriculture and Land
Stewardship has also said he needs to submit this information.
Gretchen Paluch, Pesticide Bureau Chief at the Iowa
Department of Agriculture, in an email response to questions from Midwest Wine Press, said:
“..the issue pertaining to tolerance is Section 408 of
the Federal Food Drug and Cosmetic Act. It states that any pesticide chemical
residue on or in food will be deemed unsafe unless there is a tolerance for the
residue or an exemption from a tolerance.”
Paluch directed Midwest Wine Press to the US EPA Antimicrobials Division. The US EPA
media office said:
“If a pesticide is to be used on a food crop or in a
manner that will result in residues in a food or animal feed, the FFDCA
requires that the EPA establish a tolerance, or maximum legal residue level, or
an exemption from the tolerance requirement for that food or feed.” The US EPA
also said, “use of ozone to treat a raw agricultural commodity in the field is
a pesticidal food use, which is subject to the FFDCA.” They said the residuals approvals process in this case is the FDA’s jurisdiction
and referred Midwest Wine Press to them.
The FDA’s Veterinary and Cosmetic
Products, Office of Media Affairs said: “The use of ozone in water on
grape vines in the field with the intent of controlling pests and diseases is
under the regulatory authority of the Environmental Protection Agency.”
In response to these vexing regulatory issues, Wilmink
argues that ozone is not a pesticide. He quotes a number of FDA rulings. For
example, the GRAS – Generally Recognized As Safe – designation was given to
ozone for use in bottled drinking drinking water in 1982 and again in 1997 for
use as a disinfectant in food processing. Wilmink’s conclusion is that if ozone
is already legally used as a disinfectant for drinking water and food, it is
surely legal for use on vines and grapes.
He says under FIFRA, “chemicals are defined as
materials that are manufactured, packaged, transported, stored and applied” and
concludes that ozone, as an unstable gas that must be generated and used on
site, does not fit that criteria. In any case, Wilmink says, ozogation
produces no lasting residuals so there is nothing to submit to the regulators.
Experts like Professors Rip G. Rice and Dee M. Graham,
private sector consultants who conducted research into the use of ozone in
agriculture and food processing, agree with Wilmink and seem to disagree with
the US EPA’s interpretation of FIFRA. As stated in their 2001
paper, U.S. FDA
Regulatory Approval of Ozone as an Antimicrobial Agent – What Is Allowed and
What Needs to Be Understood: “Ozone is not a
pesticide within the meaning of the Federal Insecticide, Fungicide, and
Rodenticide Act.”
They go on to say: “…the use of ozone applied in the
gaseous form or in aqueous solution on raw agricultural commodities is
consistent with section 201(q)(1)(B)(i) of the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic
Act.”
However, there is some reluctance from fruit growers
to use ozonated water sprays based on concerns that atmospheric ozone can
damage vines. A paper by Fritz Westover from Texas AgriLife Extension discusses
“oxidative stipple of grape leaves as the result of high atmospheric ozone
levels.” Other research by the US FDA, Effects of Ozone Air Pollution on Plants, says, “ozone pollution…causes more damage to plants than all other air
pollutants combined.” In addition, Dr. Dean Volenberg at the
University of Wisconsin published a report on atmospheric ozone vineyard damage
during last summer in Wisconsin.
In response, Wilmink says ozone leaf damage reports
are related to tropospheric ozone, a problem created by air pollution
interacting with sunlight. Ozogation, he says, uses very small amounts of ozone
compared to the amounts produced by a lightening strike: “AgriOzein’s units
apply the ozone in an aqueous state at very low doses.”
He adds that research by Professors Max McFarland and
Paul Read and all their tests in the vineyard “showed absolutely no injury due
to ozogation.” Also, says Wilmink, vines can be exposed to tropospheric ozone
for up to 24 hours – ozogation exposure only lasts seconds. For further reading
on this topic, he recommends the book “Tropospheric Ozone, Human Health and
Agricultural Impacts” (1993) by David J McKee.
The “Ozonator” is
currently spreading the word about “ozogation” at meetings and conferences in
Germany, Holland and France. He says in Europe there’s considerable interest in
his process and its regulators are more enthusiastic about cleaner, greener
options that can reduce the use of chemicals in agriculture, including
vineyards.
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