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Electrical stimulation of plant growth

I've encountered more than my fair share of skeptics on the 'pseudo-science' of electroculture, but as I gear up to design a set of experiments to test this stuff on cannabis growing in a licensed OPC warehouse, I thought I'd share my research literature links with the community.

If anyone is interested in undertaking this stuff on their own plants, I would recommend looking into the Lakhovsky coil - that's part of the starting place that sent me down this rabbit hole.

The goal of the experiments will be to determine the most beneficial processes, to bring our crazy science bud to the market and laboratory for testing, and then to develop hardware to allow the average cultivator to see reap those benefits.

Yes - there are definitely some less-than-reputable sources in this list, but hopefully their agreement with the very reputable scientific journal and newspaper articles will soften some incredulity.

I have a bunch more material downloaded in PDF format as well (PM me if it interests you).

Access : Plant Growth Response in a Simulated Electric Field-environment : Nature
ATMOSPHERIC ELECTRICITY AND PLANT NUTRITION
ELECTRICITY MAY PLAY ROLE IN PLANT GROWTH - NYTimes.com
Electro-culture: Stimulating plant growth with electricity (research thread) (contains multiple very informative links)
Electro-Culture: Stimulation of plant growth with electricity, magnetism, sound, &c
Electroculture - The Homestead.org Forum - Page 1
electroculture |Aleph9 Waveform Research Journal
Electroculture patents ( #4 ) -- methods to stimulate plant growth with electricity, magnetism, light, sound
emf-portal.femu.rwth-aachen.de/viewer.php?sid=26f9fbdb3d688988e361601fb15d0e25&sform=7&l=e&aid=18486&for_print=1
Exotic Energies Home Page
Experimenting with Electro-Culture, Part 1 « Interests of Interest
Hemp Husbandry (with Electroculture!)
IEEE Xplore - Weak Electric Fields Affect Plant Development
Influence of extremely low-frequency electric fields on the growth of Vigna radiata seedlings - Costanzo - 2011 - Bioelectromagnetics - Wiley Online Library
Lakhovsky Antenna for Enhanced Plant Growth - Edot forums
Re: What effect on plant metabolism and growth does electricity have?
Science - Electroculture, The Forces of Nature in Service for Agriculture
ScienceDirect - Biochimica et Biophysica Acta (BBA) - General Subjects : Effect of electric field on physical states of cell-associated water in germinating morning glory seeds observed by 1H-NMR
ScienceDirect - Journal of Electrostatics : The influence of an electric field on the growth of soy seedlings
SpringerLink - International Journal of Biometeorology, Volume 25, Number 4
SpringerLink - The Botanical Review, Volume 50, Number 2
Systems - Electroculture, The Forces of Nature in Service for Agriculture
The Effects of Magnetite, Magnetic Water and Magnetic Monopoles on Plant Growth
The Hindu : Electricity to induce plant growth
 

trichrider

Kiss My Ring
Veteran
subbed, below the surface...will occasionally come up for air!

thank you, good luck in your experiments.

i was thinking of wrapping (coiling) containers with wire and putting a small charge to it (using a dc inverter), creating an elctromagnetic field to see if it stimulated any aspect of growth characteristics.

any information about the effect on CEC or cations and anions?

totally freaking sick.
 
Definitely wasn't gonna bring up the cations or anions until someone else did, but that's exactly what I think is at the core of the phenomenon... I'm coming to believe that plants don't need rain for the water as much as for the ionic exchange that occurs.

subbed, below the surface...will occasionally come up for air!

thank you, good luck in your experiments.

i was thinking of wrapping (coiling) containers with wire and putting a small charge to it (using a dc inverter), creating an elctromagnetic field to see if it stimulated any aspect of growth characteristics.

any information about the effect on CEC or cations and anions?

totally freaking sick.
 
i was thinking of wrapping (coiling) containers with wire and putting a small charge to it (using a dc inverter), creating an elctromagnetic field to see if it stimulated any aspect of growth characteristics.

One of the links i posted is the blog of a kid who cut the end off an old cell phone charger and attached leads to apply 5vDC with apparent beneficial effects.

My first order of business will be to figure out a way to use a series of Peltier devices attached to my lights to create enough current from the difference in temperature between the reflector and the air to feed the plants. I figure if we're stuck wasting that energy as heat, might as well turn it into some good DC for the ladies and maybe chill the air a degree or two.
 
In summation, I'm led to believe that:

1. Seeds can be treated with electromagnetism in such a way as to affect their gender and growth rate upon germination.

2. Plants can use both atmospheric and directly applied electricity to supplement the light energy they use for their functions

3. Electricity can have a beneficial effect on aerobic soil microlife, and shows potential for the control of weeds, pests, and anaerobic bacteria

4. (this is the big one that I've been playing with for some time - I'm lookin at you trichrider) The polarity reversal between the surface of the earth and the earth's atmosphere that occurs during rainstorms is at least as critical a contribution of those storms to a plant's growth and health as the water itself.

Typically, the surface of the earth carries a negative charge and the bottom of the clouds has a positive charge (no surprise to anyone who has any inkling of ancient philosophies). During a rain event, this is reversed - the sky takes on a negative charge and the earth a positive one. When rain droplets hit the positively charged earth, the water releases negative ions. The storm ends when this electrical balance is restored.

Positive and negative ionic charges directly affect the alkalinity/acidity of water which, as we all know, affects its availability for plant life processes.

Another interesting side note (which I'm not yet ready to say I fully believe) is that the amount of free electricity available in the atmosphere (which is the energy we're talking about here) is greater at mid day than morning or night; this could theoretically have something to do with plants' preference for daytime (which was proven centuries ago to be independent of their response to light, just as the response of leaves of indoor plants to outdoor storms).
 

trichrider

Kiss My Ring
Veteran
"Reports that the characteristics acquired by the plants in electrically treated soils are transmitted by inheritance to the third generation are particularly interesting.

"Under the influence of the electrical current, the numerical proportions between hemp plants of different sexes was changed by comparison with the control to give an increased number of female plants by 20-25%, in connection with a reduction in the intensity of the oxidative processes in the plant tissues."

from the 3rd link...
 
"Reports that the characteristics acquired by the plants in electrically treated soils are transmitted by inheritance to the third generation are particularly interesting.

"Under the influence of the electrical current, the numerical proportions between hemp plants of different sexes was changed by comparison with the control to give an increased number of female plants by 20-25%, in connection with a reduction in the intensity of the oxidative processes in the plant tissues."

from the 3rd link...

YUP - i believe it may be possible to effectively feminize seeds without any hormonal manipulation and therefore less potential for genetic degradation - that's definitely on the list of hypotheses to be tested :)
 
Elemental/Macronutrient ion notes:

N: Nitrogen: gives off nitride anion (-)
P: Phosphorus: gives off phosphide anion (-)
K: Potassium: gives off potassium cation (+)

Micronutrient ion notes:
Magnesium Magnesium cation (+)
Calcium Calcium cation (+)
Zinc Zinc cation (+)

Multistate micronute cations:
Manganese Manganese(II) or manganous
Manganese(III) or manganic

Copper Copper(I) or cuprous
Copper(II) or cupric
 
Awesome! That it actually does stimulate the plants in vegetation! We always try to upgrade our grow unit and this might be a very good one. Thank you for this TS!

...Radiant electricity from my soil heating equipment always puts a static charge in my soil. Therefore I had to GROUND my soil. I always wondered what this would do to the plants knowing that humans can function better under certain amounts of electricity input.

And here we are with the answer! TY again TS!
 
Awesome! That it actually does stimulate the plants in vegetation! We always try to upgrade our grow unit and this might be a very good one. Thank you for this TS!

...Radiant electricity from my soil heating equipment always puts a static charge in my soil. Therefore I had to GROUND my soil. I always wondered what this would do to the plants knowing that humans can function better under certain amounts of electricity input.

And here we are with the answer! TY again TS!

Unfortunately, most of the huge volume of research that was done on this subject in the past few centuries seems to have been ignored or suppressed, so knowing exact beneficial current is difficult, but hopefully you'll find some luck and report back to us here!.
 

Honkytonk

Member
Attached a patent assigned to the Ciba-Geigy Corporation (now Novartis) in which a method is disclosed that induces lasting, useful and desirable properties in fish by a brief application of electrostatic fields.

Somewhen in the 80s the results of this method applied to fish, maize and fern was presented on TV in Switzerland, which were quite astonishing.
If you google the names of the patent's authors you should find that TV presentation on youtube (part1, part2 in German).

It's a thing I always wanted to try on Cannabis but never came around to buy a high voltage generator. Maybe someone else will.

:wave:
 

Attachments

  • Bioelectromagnetics.pdf
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Andyo

Active member
Veteran
by chance

by chance

I used make heated matting the carbon resitance type copper strip down each side ,
I noticed i got a slight shock off the plants in wrapped rock wool when wetted up.
but not the plants in pots in plastic dishes ,
over the heated matting was a sheet of black white polythene usually some drips of water on it.
some kind of capacitence building up n discharging into me .
thing is id grown lots in rockwool these plants were way ahead of the pots and previous rockwool plants id grown with out the matting.
more potent also.A
 

Desiderata

Bodhisattva of the Earth
Veteran
I've got a positive charge from this thread!

Remember the older adage about negative ions in the air stimulate positive human feelings...."as in, I feel better today."

This thread is a must read....imo

Des
 
Wow - it sounds like a lot of good results in everyone's previous experience! I'm very excited to get these controlled experiments set up.
 

spurr

Active member
Veteran
I didn't read through this thread yet, but this might be of interest: lighting makes mushrooms multiply (Shitaake). Research in Japan was conducted by applying 50,000 to 100,000 volts for a 10-millionth of a second to the end of a Shitaake logs four weeks before harvest and increased yield considerably.

"Lightning Makes Mushrooms Multiply" (National Geographic)
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-lightning-mushrooms-japan-harvest/

"Lightning prods shiitake to multiply" (The Japan Times)
http://search.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/nn20100101f3.html
 

spurr

Active member
Veteran
Elemental/Macronutrient ion notes:

N: Nitrogen: gives off nitride anion (-)
P: Phosphorus: gives off phosphide anion (-)
K: Potassium: gives off potassium cation (+)

FWIW, nitrogen used by plants (and in our ferts and from microbial loop) is mostly in the form of NO3 (anion) as well as NH3 and NH4 (cations; i.e., ammonicial N).
 
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