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Electrical currents and Plant life

O

OC80

Active member
Ive recently read an article in Natgeo that claims lightning strikes and the electrical current they emit will make, not only certain mushroom species, but other plants as well, yeild significantly more than without.

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2010/04/100409-lightning-mushrooms-japan-harvest/
"
Julian Ryall said:
Julian Ryall in Tokyo

for National Geographic News

Published April 9, 2010

Lightning makes mushrooms more plentiful, according to ongoing research that offers a solid scientific basis for Japanese farming lore.

For generations, Japanese farmers have welcomed storms over their fields based on the belief that lightning strikes provoke plentiful harvests of mushrooms, which are staples of Japanese cuisine. (Related: "New Lightning Type Found Over Volcano?")

Currently, mushroom demand is so high that dealers are increasingly turning to foreign suppliers. Japan imports about 50,000 tons of mushrooms a year, mainly from China and South Korea.

As part of a four-year study, scientists in northern Japan have been bombarding a variety of mushrooms in lab-based garden plots with artificially induced lightning to see if electricity actually makes the fungi multiply.

(See pictures of Brazilian mushrooms that glow in the dark.)

The latest results show that lightning-strength jolts of electricity can more than double the yield of certain mushroom species compared with conventional cultivation methods.

"We have tried these experiments with ten types of mushroom so far and have found that it is effective in eight species," said Koichi Takaki, an associate professor in engineering at Iwate University.

"We saw the best effects in shiitake and nameko mushrooms, while we also tested reishi mushrooms, which are not edible but are used in certain types of traditional Chinese medicine," he said.

Don't Fry the Mushrooms

Takaki's team has been applying high-voltage pulses to logs seeded with mushroom spores to try to stimulate mushroom growth.

Naturally occurring lightning can carry up to a billion volts of electricity, which get carried through the ground during a lightning strike. (Related: "'Upside Down' Lightning as Strong as Earth-bound Bolts.")

A direct hit with that much energy would fry the mushrooms. Instead, it's more likely mushrooms near the strike zone grow after being exposed to a weakened charge traveling through the soil, so the researchers have been using gentler bursts of electricity.

Repeated tests have shown that the fungi react best when they're exposed to between 50,000 and 100,000 volts for one ten-millionth of a second.

Given the right amount of electricity, the shiitake crop yielded double the amount harvested from logs not exposed to an energy burst. The amped-up nameko logs produced 80 percent more mushrooms.

"The reaction of the mushrooms to this sudden burst of energy is initially to decrease the proteins and enzymes secreted by their hyphae, followed by a sudden increase," Takaki said.

Hyphae are elongated cells that act like roots for mushrooms, anchoring the spores in the ground and taking in nutrients. The hyphae also give rise to new fruiting bodies, the fleshy, capped structures that produce spores and are harvested as crops.

The reason for the hyphae's reaction to lightning is still being studied. But it's possible the mushrooms are giving themselves a reproductive boost in response to danger, said Yuichi Sakamoto, chief researcher at the Iwate Biotechnology Research Center, who has been working with Takaki's team.

"For mushrooms, a lightning strike would be a very serious threat that could easily kill them off," Sakamoto said.

"I think they have the need to regenerate before they die, and when they sense lightning, they automatically accelerate their development" and produce more fruiting bodies, he said.

Lightning Also Sparks Radish Buds?

Based on the successes so far, Takaki and Sakamoto think machines for delivering lightning-like bursts could become a boon to commercial farmers—although first the team needs to make the technology more user-friendly.

"Right now, the equipment that we use to grow these mushrooms is very specialized and complicated, so I want to improve the design to make it easy to operate," Takaki said.

"We want to collaborate with commercial mushroom farmers and eventually commercialize this technology." (Related: "My Neighbor Totoro Farming Ecosystem Declining in Japan.")

Takaki's team has also started similar experiments on daikon radishes, with early tests indicating that the species tends to bud earlier when exposed to artificial lightning.

Lightning tests are being conducted at other institutions on rapeseed plants, beans, and some varieties of lily, Takaki added."
Click to expand...


I also remember some1 on here a couple years back trying to grow with electrical current running through metal plates around the root zone without using HID.

What do you guys think? Will there be an electro-gardening aspect in the future?
 
M

Matanuskan Flo

Member
this has been goin on for yrs with MJ as well. there are huge threads on GC with side by side tests of plants w/ & w/o gentle currents being applied to the soil medium. they realized you had to place the electrodes further from the main stem for best results, also the electrodes must be placed a few inches deep. a 9 volt battery hooked up to a long nail can be used, or cell phone adapters chopped up work too, any low voltage device. the results were quite crazy, double the growth/yield. helped with disease esistance & much more i cannot recall. check GC.
 
W

watson540

Member
weird they use a 9v battery..thats a far jump from 10k volts
I'd give it a try with a neon transformer...or maybe a cold cathode tranny (less powerful than neon)

a neon tranny should get you up to 10,000 volts
 
catman

catman

half cat half man half baked
Veteran
A capacitor would do the trick for getting that much voltage. Just charge it up and unload.

Very interesting stuff. Makes ya wonder how much lightning has influenced all sorts of life on our planet.
 
ChaosCatalunya

ChaosCatalunya

5.2 club is now 8.1 club...
Veteran
A mate with a dodgy ghetto grow ages ago had some plants near his faulty power cable really freak out, grow very big... it was something we never followed up and probably should have...

They used to sell a dodgy snake oil machine for growers that ran some kind of quantum field that tripled yields... allegedly.... megabucks and for some strange reason no longer being marketed AFAIK.... anybody else remember it ?

The idea that a 9v battery could help is interesting, sounds like a few tests might be in order, a good excuse to dust off the old Discombobulator ...
 
L

lapis

New member
Matanuskan Flo said:
this has been goin on for yrs with MJ as well. there are huge threads on GC with side by side tests of plants w/ & w/o gentle currents being applied to the soil medium. they realized you had to place the electrodes further from the main stem for best results, also the electrodes must be placed a few inches deep. a 9 volt battery hooked up to a long nail can be used, or cell phone adapters chopped up work too, any low voltage device. the results were quite crazy, double the growth/yield. helped with disease esistance & much more i cannot recall. check GC.
Click to expand...

I am new to this site, can you tell me what you mean by “GC”?

I am VERY interested in the subject matter, and would like to research it more. Any help you can give me would be very much appreciated
 
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