A company in France is selling recordings (protéodies) of a very special music that is suppose to protect plants against certain kinds of diseases. There are also claims that positive results have been obtained for the protection of vines and cucumbers.
You can refer to articles on effect of music on plants.
Work done by Dr. Jagdish Chandra Bose link
https://www.thebetterindia.com/76587/jagdish-chandra-bose-indian-biophysicist-radio-plant-physiology/
"Determined to reveal the wonders of plant perception to the world, Bose described his experiments and their results in his 1902 paper,”Responses in the Living and Non-Living”. He wrote how plants grew more quickly when exposed to nice music and gentle whispers, and poorly when exposed to harsh music and loud speech. He even mentioned how plants became depressed when exposed to polluted air and darkening skies. In short, his work showed that plants could feel pleasure and they could feel pain."
As far as I know Retallack (1973) was the first to present evidence under controlled conditions that music positively influences the growth of plants.
Retallack, D. L. (1973). The sound of music and plants. Marina del Rey: DeVorss.
Nowadays, we rather assume that experiments that have achieved positive results are research artefacts.
For example, according to Scott (2008, p. 208), plants always grow in the direction of the loudspeaker regardless of the music. Near the loudspeaker, the air is a little warmer than in the surroundings.
Scott, P. (2008). Physiology and Behaviour of Plants. Hoboken: Wiley & Sons.
There are experiments on plants, by playing classical music and rock music in front of her. The plants that played classical music flourished, while those who played rock music died. "
No. They have no organ to pickup air vibrations (eg: an ear) nor a brain to interpret music.
You might as well ask whether plants grow better when provided with a nice view of the countryside...
However, plants are very sensitive to air temperature, that may be changed by the presence of sound vibrations. This has led to incorrect hypotheses.
Dear Rafe Sholer I just discovered 2 publications that may interest you. Gagliano et al:Green symphonies: A call for studies on acoustic communication in plants, Behavioral Ecology, 24: 789-796, 2013 or Gagliano et al : Towards understanding plant bioacoustics. Trends in Plant Science 17: 323-325, 2012.
Best regards jpj
Hi Jean-Pierre, some very interesting reading, thank you. Plants may well be sensitive to sound vibrations, however this is a long way from appreciating music. Take the example of a snake - they "hear" or "detect" vibrations through their jaw bone, so music would be perceived very differently with a snake's physiology. Even more so for a plant. So yes, plants may be sensitive to sound, but would not distinguish sound from music...
Are plants sensitive to music? No more than sound in general.
Can certain music protect plants against disease? Maybe, but I doubt it.
You want to test? Play some plants really loud white noise for months - exciting the whole audible frequency spectrum equally. Keep some others in silence. If sound vibrations make a difference, you'll see it.
Thank you for your nice suggestion. Appel and Crocroft (2014) made a more refined experiment. They first registered the noise made by a caterpillar chewing a leaf. Then they made a playback of that noise close to the plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The plant responded to that noise by synthesizing substances directed against a potential leaf eater (I think that they also should have done a control experiment of the same kind by playing other sounds, not from an insect chewing a leaf).
published in Oecologia DOI 10.1007/s 00442-014-2995, 2014.
Regards
Very interesting! Certainly sound effects growth, chemical production etc. I still would like to see the research this company in France selling music CDs for plants is basing their claims on. If it works, why not publish the research :)
I have not contacted yet people of this company. You are right, if it really works why not publish their results (with appropriate controls) to make it public and not just an article written by journalists?? This science is called (in french) génodique. Have a look at Sternheimer J. musique des particules éémentaires Comptes rendus de l'Académie des Sciences Paris II, 297: 829, 1983. and Henty M. Ondes d'échelles (on line) 2016. and also RG
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