How Good is a Plants Taste in Music?

Have you ever wondered if plants can pick up on sound? One can find endless articles online of findings from established scientists and professors who will argue that music can be beneficial to plant growth, while others will disagree. I’ve been intrigued by this idea for a while but never took the time to find my own results….

The idea of experimenting with plants and sound frequencies is something far from new. But, it is still a bit of a mystery. There have been proven studies about how music can positively affect plant growth, yet these studies have come across as basic and directed at plant growth in a general sense. I do personally believe that certain music, when directed at plants, can have a positive affect during the growth period but the field of study for this type of thing has plenty of possibilities for more experimentation.

A study was conducted on pepper seeds and basil where nano mechanical oscillations, or vibrations were measured between the two seeds. “Our results show that plants are able to positively influence growth of seed germination in the same way. We believe that the answer may involve acoustic signals generated using nano mechanical oscillations from inside the cell which allow rapid communication between nearby plants.(Wall,1)”

Dorothy Retallack’s experiment which was conducted in the 1970’s is a good example of how the idea of messing with sound and plant growth is nothing new. She conducted an experiment, similar to the one I will be doing with my group where she set up three separate chambers. One with a const ant tone, the second with a tone played for 3 hours per day and the third with no tone at all. In the first chamber, all of the plants died within 14 days, in the second the plants flourished and in the third the plants grew at a normal pace. This just goes to show how there can be positive effects on plant growth.

A similar study was conducted by Katherine Creath and Gary Schwartz, both who have Ph.D’s in optical Science, where they also found effects from sound vibration on plants.

There was another study done on strawberries in a greenhouse where they were exposed to sound. It was found that when there were no significant differences between the circumstances of the two sunlight greenhouses, the strawberry after the sound wave stimulation grew stronger than in the control and its leaf were deeper green, and shifted to an earlier time about one week to blossom and bear fruit. It was also found that the resistance of strawberry against disease and insect pest were enhanced. They did find positive effects on the strawberries that were exposed to consistent vibrations.

Another study was conducted at the University of Missouri reliving how plants respond to sound with more defense if the detect a threat. “When later faced with a real caterpillar, the plants that heard chewing noises produced a greater amount of insecticide-like chemicals than the silence group. They also seemed able to pick out those vibrations signaling danger playing wind noises or insect mating calls did not trigger the same chemical boost.”

references
http://news.discovery.com/earth/plants/peppers-dig-basils-good-vibrations-130508.htm pepper seeds
http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/abs/10.1089/107555304322849039