Symphonies of Growth: Unveiling the Impact of Sound Waves on Plant Physiology and Productivity

Abstract

The application of sound wave technology to different plant species has revealed that variations in the Hz, sound pressure intensity, treatment duration, and type of setup of the sound source significantly impact the plant performance. A study conducted on cotton plants treated with Plant Acoustic Frequency Technology (PAFT) highlighted improvements across various growth metrics. In particular, the treated samples showed increases in the height, size of the fourth expanded leaf from the final one, count of branches carrying bolls, quantity of bolls, and weight of individual bolls. Another study showed how the impact of a 4 kHz sound stimulus positively promoted plant drought tolerance. In other cases, such as in transgenic rice plants, GUS expression was upregulated at 250 Hz but downregulated at 50 Hz. In the same way, sound frequencies have been found to enhance the osmotic potential, with the highest observed in samples treated with frequencies of 0.5 and 0.8 kHz compared to the control. Furthermore, a sound treatment with a frequency of 0.4 kHz and a sound pressure level (SPL) of 106 dB significantly increased the paddy rice germination index, as evidenced by an increase in the stem height and relative fresh weight. This paper presents a complete, rationalized and updated review of the literature on the effects of sound waves on the physiology and growth parameters of sound-treated plants.

Sound Matrix Shaping of Living Matter: From Macrosystems to Cell Microenvironment, Where Mitochondria Act as Energy Portals in Detecting and Processing Sound Vibrations

“…Several studies have suggested that the response to sound stimulation is complex, further confirming that cell types other than auditory cells can react directly to sound stimuli. For example, it has been shown that sound wave stimulation brings about significant changes to the protein structure of tobacco cells, producing an increase in the alpha helix structure and a decrease in the unwound β helix [62]; furthermore, sound stimulation has produced effects on the cell cycle and on the growth of plants [63,64]. It has been demonstrated that bacterial cells are able to respond to specific single acoustic frequencies and are capable of emitting sounds [65].…”