Can electric fields help plants grow?
A study has found that a high-voltage electric field generated using wind and rain can boost crop yield, but other scientists say the results should be treated with caution.
The effectiveness of using electric fields to stimulate crop growth, known as electroculture, is far from established, despite being tested in Europe, China and the United States.
Jianjun Luo at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing and his colleagues have grown two sets of peas in a greenhouse, with one being exposed to an electric field. Previous tests have drawn electricity from the grid to create the field, but this one used a small device, called a triboelectric nanogenerator, to generate power from wind and rainfall.
As a result, pea yields increased by almost a fifth, and the plants germinated faster than the control peas as well. “The main advance is that the self-powered system can boost crop yield by harvesting the wasted wind and raindrop energy in our daily life,” says Luo.
However there are some concerns from researchers, in that exactly how electroculture works is unclear and the study proposing its use had methodological flaws.
