Ecology, Environment and Conservation Paper

QUANTITATIVE EFFECT OF MUSICAL SOUND ON SEED GERMINATION KINETICS IN PISUM SATIVUM

Mousumi Das and Dipak Ghosh

Abstract

Germination of seed is a crucial step in a plant’s life cycle. It is essential for emergence of seedling and finally producing viable offspring. Germination encompasses a wide number of events influenced by different factors and sound is not an exception. Sound is a vibration that propagates as an acoustic wave. Sound waves with different frequencies, intensities and amplitudes affect different phases of plant’s life cycle including germination. Seed germination kinetics, particularly germination speed contributes a major role in the variability of germination. This work is aimed to analyse the effect of musical sound with specific spectral characteristics mainly Detrended Fluctuation Analysis scaling exponent on seed germination kinetics in Pisum sativum. Indian Classical music and Natural music was used to stimulate Pisum sativum seeds for 72 hours. Germination kinetics was evaluated in terms of Mean Germination Time, t20 and Germination Percentage. Experimental results showed that musical sound can speed up germination process in Pisum sativum. Extremely high statistically significant differences were observed in germination kinetics after musical sound treatment (p<0.0001). This new work will be valuable for improving germination performance in Pisum sativum.