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Talking and Playing Music to Plants · Hydroponics Daily

• 0:00
  Hi, and welcome back to Hydroponics Daily with me, Dr. Russell Sharp.
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  We've talked in a previous episode about air movement, and today we're going
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  to be talking about a specific form of air movement, and that is talking to
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  your plants and playing music to your plants.
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  Is it nonsense, or is there some rationale, some science behind the idea?
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  So, if you're British and you're older than, say, 36.
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  Then talking to your plants is probably most
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  associated with King Charles or
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  Prince Charles as he was back then and that
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  was from a media interview back in 1986 where
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  he said that he was taught he talked to his plants and it was he was confident
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  that they made them grow better and most scientists have regarded this as hippie
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  nonsense for many years and the idea of talking to your plants goes back to 1848 when Dr.
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  Gustav Theodore Fetchner claimed in his book Nana, oh Nana, that plants were
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  capable of feeling emotion.
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  However, just because you believe something is happening doesn't mean that is
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  actually happening and there could be other reasons for that,
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  such as the CO2, extra CO2 in the air that you breathe out,
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  the extra moisture and of course just simply the
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  air movement that is created by talking to
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  the plants being around your plants if you
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  had a really deep voice and you resonated like
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  Pavarotti then maybe you could even get your tomato plants
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  to pollinate themselves by vibrating them and
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  I don't know what frequency you would need to sing to
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  get a tomato plant to vibrate but the the concept
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  is the same there i'm not sure if dr gustav
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  fechter thought that being happy or sad or angry to
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  your plants was better i would have thought angry would have been better
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  for them because you're moving the plant or you're moving more hot air whereas
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  happy more chilled out you're probably not doing that more relaxed and things
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  like that but it certainly helps your emotions being around your plants favorite
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  part of my day is going into my greenhouse and watering and checking my plants
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  for and disease and pollinating my tomatoes,
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  things like that. Yeah, certainly emotions are involved.
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  And then if we move from voices to music, it's actually found that if you play a,
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  voice recordings to plants and music to plants, they can have very different responses.
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  So music specifically with a frequency of 125 hertz and 250 hertz affected the
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  expression of specific genes.
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  But what processes these genes control has not yet been confirmed.
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  And South Korean scientists found that music played to rice plants promoted
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  growth and hastened flower.
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  While indian researchers in 1958
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  demonstrated that simple vibrations generated
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  by an electric motor actually increased growth by some
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  30 to 50 i'm not sure
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  if that motor was linked to a generator was pumping
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  out co2 and stuff like that 1958 experimental standards
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  were not quite as high in the 1970s in
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  the good old us of a they found that harsh noises
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  promoted growth of plants while the germination of
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  seeds was promoted by very loud sounds so
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  i think they're probably the same thing aren't they harsh noises
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  and very loud sounds let's think of some you know
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  some hard rock perhaps or some
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  skrillers is it skrillers something like that despite the
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  this though it's not widely taken up in agriculture and horticulture.
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  In the last 60 years you don't go around commercial greenhouses
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  and and have a specific heavy metal playing
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  out to the music you might have a radio playing
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  and especially in like labor intensive
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  areas like pack houses and where they're
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  propagating cuttings and things like that you might have cuttings you
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  might have a radio going interesting story someone once
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  told me was that they used to work in a
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  nurse plant nursery where they were taking cuttings all day and there
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  was one girl who was really sensitive and it was her radio and
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  then the summer students would come in from university over the summer
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  and they'd turn the radio to radio one and
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  she would get really upset and she'd want it back on her local
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  commercial radio station and then one day she just
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  flipped and she was found the owner of
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  the nursery found her at the bus stop crying her eyes out with her radio
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  in her hands and the university students had to go to
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  the bus stop and apologize so yeah music on nurseries
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  is not always a good idea the royal horticultural society
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  which is the main gardening society here in
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  the uk they did some research where they tried to
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  negate the effects of the air breathed out and the cot breathed out and just
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  look at the the wavelengths so for this they used electronic speakers and that
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  allowed them to also you look at things like ultrasonic wavelengths and these
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  were found to be disruptive to plant growth and had a deleterious effect.
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  So if you're talking ultrasound, it's 20 to 40 kilohertz. And.
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  They were that the ultrasound would promote germination
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  which was interesting that could be another way to promote germination in
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  seeds that are difficult to germinate but in general growth
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  it was disruptive and so it disrupts cell
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  function chromosome damage can even be occurring so
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  you could could be a way to mutate plants is to give them
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  a bit of a ultrasonic treatment when they're very very young you
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  could get some polyploidy that might be an interesting way of
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  getting polyploid a day i'm not sure if anyone's ever looked at that so one
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  treatment can could last for many days even
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  less lead to cell death organ death plant death so.
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  Even at very low energy levels ultrasonic treatments
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  could potentially induce sort of effects on
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  the plants so if you could lower it down
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  to the point where it was not killing it off you might
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  you might might be able to slow growth and
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  it could be an alternative to growth regulators
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  these synthetic growth regulators that cause massive problems
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  instead of instead of putting a toxic chemical on your
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  plant you could just give them a bit of a with some
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  ultrasonic treatment you know the price of these units
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  are going down and down could be something the grow shops could stock you
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  could go into your grow room and give them a every now and again and
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  so yeah and then there was a report from
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  bulgaria in the early 1990s that recorded
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  increases yields in tomato plants given ultrasonic treatments but
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  that was not progressed probably because of the difficulties in
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  controlling the energy input of the ultrasonic treatments to
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  the whole plant so certainly something you know
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  i'd be interested in looking at could we use ultrasound.
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  As a alternative to synthetic
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  growth regulators growth shops all of it because there's another bit.
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  Of kit they can sell and then you know so yeah get
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  in contact if you want to do an experiment on that so that's
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  been talking to your plants playing music to your
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  plants i'll just give you an update on some of the experiments we've i've talked about
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  previously i've talked about spring onion
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  trials they are not progressing as well as i.
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  Hoped we've been growing them in cocoa in these
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  sort of trays designed for tree seedlings so
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  they got very very very long grow media
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  holes not wide and i've been
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  trialing a multitude of different depths in the cocoa seeing
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  what's the best depth for the spring onions because i wanted a nice long spring
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  onion and very disappointed with the germination rate on about 10 different
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  varieties so i think cocoa is probably not the growing media i can't imagine
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  that all 10 varieties are terrible so we're going to switch that out i'm probably
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  going to go for something highly sand based maybe perlite i know i've talked.
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  You know talk bad about perlite in the past but maybe
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  i'll go for perlite next and see if that can help improve the
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  germination and the establishment i think they're just
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  struggling to get through the cocoa at the moment so yeah
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  the the the two that have been the the most
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  vigorous in growth have been been lisbon whites
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  which if you know anything about spring onions that's the main one that everyone grows
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  and then matrix matrix seems
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  to be a good one as well always got and then we've done
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  about three three experiments so far and those two
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  have always been the best germinating so might do
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  one sand-based and one perlite next to see which one's the
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  best grammy that's what you do as a scientist you just mess around
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  make sure you always write them down who's the famous american scientist was
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  it the the guy on the telly with the bow tie he always says the difference between
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  messing around and science is that in science you always write down your findings
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  and that's what we're going to do with our spring onion trials And the hope
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  is that come January, February,
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  we've got something we can take to the spring onion growers at their big annual
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  trade show and say, you know, this is what we've been doing.
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  This is how you can improve your spring onion growth hydroponically.
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  So that's been Hydroponics Daily for today. I hope you've enjoyed it and I'll see you again tomorrow.
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• 9:13
  Thank you very much for listening. Until tomorrow, goodbye.