History of Lazo TPC
In 1996, a Chilean fruit grow Florencio Lazo Barra created a new approach for controlling frost damage. For many years, Lazo had studied airflow principles and believed that heated air, when applied on the field in a special way with sophisticated aerodynamics, would create a temporary thermal barrier to frost. He created a blower and venting system using air heated by an LP Gas burner.
Lazo observed that the stream of 100ºC hot air from his frost control machine passed very close to the vine leaves that were newly sprouted, but did no damage to the tender buds. He also observed that even when the hot air passed as close as .2 meters, the flowers in his plum orchard had no damaged. He contemplated that this level of hot air would kill fungus as well. This was Lazo’s "seconds of inspiration," that was then followed by “years of perspiration" to perfect the technology that produces the results now being achieved by TPC.
With this inspiration, Lazo began doing trials with new and different designs, taking advantage of his aerodynamics knowledge. In 1999, after many trials of new ideas and designs, Lazo developed the TPC machine that is now being used successfully to greatly reduce or eliminate pesticide use during the growing season.
In 1999 Lazo started doing trials of TPC in his own table grape and wine vineyards. By 2002 he was sure he had developed something very important and began the patent process in the USA (Thermal Pest Control) and in many countries of the world, including the EU and Chile.
For the first time during the 2000 growing season, Lazo applied TPC treatments in place of the normal regimen of fungicides and pesticides from the beginning to the end of the season on a portion of his wine grapes and table grapes. Throughout the season, there were no problems, neither insects nor fungal. The vines produced about 20% higher yields in his wine grapes with sugar levels about 5% greater than in past years. An especially sweet added benefit was that the use of TPC cut Lazo’s growing costs versus conventional pesticide and fungicide treatment by more than 50%.
In the years since 2000, testing has continued while TPC has remained beneath the radar screen of mainstream agriculture. Patents were applied for and granted in major agricultural production regions and countries such as the USA, The European Union, South Africa, New Zealand, Canada, Mexico and Argentina and are pending in 8 other countries.