Bok choy, a Chinese cabbage used in East Asian cuisine, grows more robustly when exposed to music – but not just any music, a group of researchers from Malaysia and the United Kingdom report in a recent study.
“Music for Plants? An Investigation into the Impact of Exposure to Acoustic Stimulus in Bok Choy (Brassica rapa) Plants,” published in the journal Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture, describes effects on the growth of bok choy plants from exposure to classical, rock and no music.
Plants serenaded with J.S. Bach’s “Brandenburg” concertos “exhibited significant differences in shoot characteristics with the highest total fresh weight, shoot fresh weight, and mean leaf numbers.” Those exposed to a compilation of instrumental rock music “demonstrated values that were the lowest across all plant parameters.”
The researchers caution that the impact of music on plant growth may depend on factors more nuanced than stylistic labels. “One might wonder whether, for example, if electrical instruments were played at a slower and more relaxing tempo (e.g., light pop music), and a more dramatic piece of classical music (e.g., Stravinsky’s ‘The Rite of Spring’) were to have been used, would the results be similar?”
The full report:
http://esiculture.com/index.php/esiculture/article/view/677/440
(via http://slippedisc.com)
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