There is a chapter on Sonic Bloom in the 1989 book
"Secrets of the Soil" by pseudoscientists Peter
Thompkins and Christopher Bird. They are the same two
authors of the bestseller "Secret Life of Plants"
which was also mainly pseudoscience.
I believe Sonic Bloom contains gibberellic acid, which
could easily explain why it might cause an increase in
leaf expansion and stem elongation. There is no need
to make wild hypotheses that bird calls cause stomata
to open wider and more efficiently absorb mineral
nutrients.
Sonic Bloom also exagerates the concept of foliar
fertilization, which has legitimate but limited use in
plant cultivation. Foliar fertilization was discussed
before in this forum:
http://bionet.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk/hypermail/plant-ed/plant-ed.200202/0022.html
Plants often have luxury consumption of mineral
nutrients, so roots are usually more than adequate to
absorb all the mineral nutrients that a plant
requires.
Ross Koning has a nice webpage on plants and music.
Koning, Ross E. 1994. Science Projects on Music and
Sound. Plant Physiology Information Website.
http://koning.ecsu.ctstateu.edu/music.html.
(2-6-2003).
It might be good experience for your students to test
Sonic Bloom alone versus a water control and a
gibberellic acid treatment. For fairness, all
treatments would receive a complete mineral nutrient
solution at every irrigation. Maybe your students
could put up a website of their results and possibly
debunk Sonic Bloom.
David R. Hershey
<mmphillips at stkate.edu> wrote in message
news:b1up7d$bgi$1 at mercury.hgmp.mrc.ac.uk...> Dear
Plant Edders -
>> What have you heard or do you know about "sonic
bloom"?
> We do independent research projects in our General
Biology laboratory and
> have a student group that is really keen on
investigating "sonic bloom".
> From my brief search of the internet I'd say it's a
crock :
>> This is what one site said:
>> "Bird song stimulates the opening of the stomata of
leafy plants, thus
> enabling them to respire and take on nutrients from
the air. The sonic
> bloom technology utilises this knowledge. By
broadcasting birdsong
> frequencies (embedded in music) and spraying a
nutrient rich mist over the
> plants, the plants can be stimulated into taking on
much more nutrient than
> in normal conditions and greatly increased growth
can be seen. Flowering
> and fruiting is also improved, and resistance to
blights and disease
> increased. Plants exibit hitherto unseen patterns of
growth, given the
> inexhaustable supply and take up of nutrient, these
new patterns are
> carried on to the next generation. The challenge is
to integrate this
> technology into the farming system of the future in
harmony with nature. It
> remains to be seen whether this is possible."
>> have you encountered this? What do you think?
>> Martha Phillips
> Biology Dept.
> The College of St. Catherine
>mmphillips at stkate.edu
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