Capsicum annuum

Well, Readers, I don’t know about you but I often converse with my plants – praising them when they’re doing well, cooing over my baby spider plants, gently encouraging anyone who looks a bit sickly. But apparently I’ve been doing it all wrong, because an agricultural start-up in California has been producing extraordinary results by playing sounds at 80 decibels (the equivalent of a police car siren).

We know that plants react to sounds, even though they obviously don’t have ears – it’s been shown that if you play the sound of a caterpillar munching to plants, some species will produce toxic chemicals designed to deter predators. It’s presumed that they’re reacting to the vibration.

Now, Haivya, the start-up, have a patent pending on their ‘Bioacoustic Cultivation and Communication Protocol’ (BCCP). This is not just one sound, but a suite of sounds and frequencies, that have different effects at different growth stages. It’s been tested so far on bell peppers, soy beans and cannabis, and has resulted in an increase in yield from 42 percent to a whacking 90 percent in cannabis, plus some plants have shown a faster growth rate and less water consumption.

Before we get too excited, it should be noted that the paper that records these results has not yet been peer-reviewed and we are not sure what is going on here. One scientist speculates that the sounds could be affecting not the plants themselves, but the soil that they’re growing in. And the results will need to be validated by further research. But still. Even if the results are not as spectacular as shown here, an increase in yield with no need for pesticides or fertiliser or herbicides should surely be a good thing, though the noise pollution from greenhouses might be a whole new problem.

The New Scientist article is here.

The research paper is here.