Effect of Magnetic Field on Germination

[stvkc69]

View attachment 1607720There have been numerous reports of positive effects of magnetic treatment of seed prior to planting (Sweet peppers, lemon balm, wheat). However, I could not find anything in the literature concerning cannabis. Sounded a bit like tinfoil hat stuff but it was easy enough to try. I have a current field trial with a local grower using sets of treated and untreated seed. I would like to share this photo that shows the marked difference between sets. The dry seed was placed in a chamber between two rare earth magnets for 56 hours and the control seed were kept a few feet away. Then both sets of seed were placed in the same 90mm glass petri plate containing a wet paper towel below and above the seed. The plate was then incubated for 48 hours at 78*F . The photo shows the difference between control group seed on the right and treated seed on the left. I am currently studying how long the seed needs to be in the magnetic field and for how long the differences between control and treated seed lasts. Pretty remarkable and I was pretty surprised. Has anybody heard or worked on this. BTW I am not a nut.

it's been my experience so far that the south pole of the magnet works. The north pole seems to have the opposite effect. If not right away then later down the road. If the seedlings do make it. They don't do well

 

[stvkc69]

Excellent information, thanks. I would have done exactly what you did. I doubt that the exact field strength is that important. The reviews that you linked show positive effects over a huge range of strengths, some pulsed, some not. Having said that, it sounds as though your setup was high strength, to say the least.

I am not sure that I have magnets around any more that are that strong, but I may pick some up. Thanks again for posting this. Boy, it is still a mystery to me why MF would have that dramatic an

 

[stvkc69]

I germinate seeds on top of LED drivers, all my seeds have their mickey mouse ears by about 60 hours, what's weird is I do better on drivers than on a propagation or vivarium mat. Are their magnets in LED drivers?

Absolutely!
LED drivers have a magnetic transformer core. Probably a pretty strong one

 

[stvkc69]

I don't want to leave this as a one off. I have been busy with the same batch of seed. I got a couple of super strong 1" rare earth cylinder magnets and made a chamber to be able to handle these beasts. I still have to be careful but am learning. I have now been getting consistency, in that there are differences between treated and control sets but sometimes it is not so much difference. Here are two photos of magnetic treated dormant seed on the left and control dormant seed on the right. There are marked differences in one trial and not so much in the other. I'm working on pinning down the differences. Eg use of stratified seed, having the seed in different positions during the treatment, different time treatments. So far nothing to report definitively, just interesting and suggestive. Nothing has yielded the marked differences of that first trial ( it may have something to do with those seeds having been refrigerated???). I have a few thousand of this batch of seed...a cbd photo strain from 2020 that I either use or throw away. So as long as the seed holds out I will try to pin this down. I have been measuring radicle length with a cool open source program ImageJ used in the research and medical fields. (http://imagej.org)

So far the numbers(an average of all that have germinated ) show that the control seed radicles are shorter than the experimentals. Percentages have been 30%, 78%, 85%, 46% The two pictures are of the 46% trial #1(marked difference) and 85% trial #2(not so much difference but still visible) The standard deviation is enormous but this is probably unavoidable and usual in outbred seed like these. So averages may not be the best indicators....if any of you are statisticians and have some tips, please chime in!

Thanks for all the comments and interest. Weird stuff especially on dormant seed.

Just curious as to witch side your using? North or south pole of the magnet?

 

[Tom Bombadil]

i was bored, sorry

 

[stvkc69]

No magnets in drivers, but there is a magnetic field around the internal circuitry, just like an electro-magnet used in scrap metal yards but much smaller of course.

 

[stvkc69]

Supposedly you just need to put 1 magnet under the germination glass south pointing upward. In addition you could do the same under your pot during grow. It might be related to old knowledge, like sleep in a north-south position, head pointing south should give a better sleep ( north will pull irons towards the brain creating havoc lol). Might also explain biodynamic growth calenders following the mooncycle ie moons magnetic pull on earth.

You have it covered mate, if you do all that before my fall grow, I won't have anything else to test. But I will anyway, at least as far as the simple comparison. Your comment on the round magnets is spot on, I will have to have another look at options. I have a drill press, so making an effective cage for the round magnets should be easy. If you set up for round magnets, I'd love to see pics of what you come up with.

I noticed one thing of particular interest on the KJ site, they showed illustrations of the magnetic flux density in various configurations, and much to my surprise the densest flux is not between two magnets attracting, it is above the surface of a single magnet with steel plates on both sides of it. It may be the case that the highest flux density would be sitting on the surface of a round magnet sitting in a fitted drilled hole in a steel plate. Sadly, I can't think of a way that we could determine that for sure. Maybe testing this setup vs. one with two identical magnets with seeds between them would be worth doing.

All these variations could use up a lot of seeds...

A gauss meter measures magnetic flux

 

[stvkc69]

My magnetic garden experiment. The first pic is my garden at high noon. I get about 3hrs of direct sun per day. So I decided to try this hoping that I could actually grow food here again. As I have in years past, before the neighbors trees overtook my garden space. I put a stack of ring magnet's on a galvanized steel wire oriented north to north. One end is bent around a piece rebar and the other end is attached to a copper pipe. The wire is buried under the rows near the root zone. As you can see from the multi meter the wire is carrying a slite charge. It fluctuates throughout the day depending on the weather. So to make a long story shorter. I was actually able to harvest a fair amount of food from this plot last year. And from what I've been told it should improve over time. If you're interested at all in where I came with this wacky idea. Here's the link that took me down this rabbit hole. https://www.electrocultureandmagnetoculture.com/contact.html