Magnetic field pre-sowing treatment as an organic friendly technique to promote plant growth and chemical elements accumulation in early stages of cotton

Abstract

The enhancement of plant growth using an environmental friendly technique is an absolutely desirable step for modern agriculture. This study reports the positive effect of pulsed electromagnetic field in early growth characteristics of cotton plants, as well as the percentage content of some important chemical elements. Pulsed electromagnetic field was used for 0, 15 and 30 minutes as a pre-sowing treatment in cotton seeds in a pot experiment under field conditions. The experiment followed a completely randomized design, with 3 main treatments and 60 replications for each treatment in a one year study. The use of magnetic field as a pre-sowing treatment is becoming more familiar among researchers, as it is closer to the agricultural practices. In all measurements (transpiration rate, photosynthetic rate, stomatal conductance, root growth, shoot growth and N, P, K, Ca and Mg percentage), plants derived from treated seeds, performed better than control plants with statistically significant differences at the 5% level of significance. The exposure of seeds in magnetic field for 15 and 30 minutes gave statistically significant better results than control in most measurements. In chemical analysis, seeds treated for 30 minutes (MF-30) gave the highest values for all measurements, except K where seeds treated for 15 minutes (MF-15) gave the higher values in all three measurements. The investigation of plant physiology and chemical elements accumulation revealed an alternative approach for the mechanism of magnetic field enhancement.