“Greenhouse gas, any gas that has the property of absorbing infrared radiation (net heat energy)

emitted from Earth’s surface and reradiating it back to Earth’s surface, thus contributing to the
greenhouse effect. Carbon dioxide, methane, and water vapour are the most important
greenhouse gases. (To a lesser extent, surface-level ozone, nitrous oxides, and fluorinated gases
also trap infrared radiation.) Greenhouse gases have a profound effect on the energy budget of
the Earth system despite making up only a fraction of all atmospheric gases. Concentrations of
greenhouse gases have varied substantially during Earth’s history, and these variations have
driven substantial climate changes at a wide range of timescales. In general, greenhouse gas
concentrations have been particularly high during warm periods and low during cold periods.”
(Mann, 2019). The amount of greenhouse gasses in the atmosphere is significantly increasing in
years, thus, becoming a much bigger threat over time. Based on the research on the major
contributors of greenhouse gasses that is conducted by the United States Environmental
Protection Agency, it shows that 7% of the total greenhouse gasses on the atmosphere is Nitrous
Oxide (N2O) which is mainly coming from agricultural activities such as fertilizers who is the
primary source of Nitrous Oxide (N2O). “University of California, Berkeley, chemists have
found a smoking gun proving that increased fertilizer use over the past 50 years is responsible for
a dramatic rise in atmospheric nitrous oxide, which is a major greenhouse gas contributing to
global climate change.” (Sanders, 2012).

In the past years’ researchers and scientists are eagerly finding an effective and environmental
friendly alternative for chemical fertilizers. “As time progresses, studies on the effect of sound
on plants have been carried out by different researchers and scientists all over the world,
focusing on a variety of types of music including classical, jazz, pop, rock, acid rock, East
Indian, and Country.” (Retallack, 1973). “A sound is a form of energy whose pressure wave is
fluctuating in a concussive manner, it can transmit through gas, liquid, and solid. Sound waves
are produced by vibration, for example, when a guitar string vibrates upon being plucked by a
guitarist. Besides, sound disperses information about the surrounding and living organisms,
adheres to this information, and or communicates through wave motions.” (Chowdhury et al.,
2014). And so the noticeable effects of sound waves being used to aid the growth of plants
pushed various researchers to facilitate more study about how the usage of different kinds of
sound waves affects the growth of different species of plants. “The studies on the effect of music
on plants date back to 1955 and the pioneers of sound experiments on plants, Singh and Ponniah
in 1955 play incomprehensible violin pieces intermittently to plants at certain times of the day
and observed some responses of plants to sounds.” (Collins and Foreman, 2001). In 2014, the
same type of experiment was done by Vanol and Vaidya, but this time they compared the effects
of two different genres of music; classical music, and rhythmic rock music, to cluster beans or
“Cyamopsis tetragonoloba”. 

Recent studies have revealed that audible sound stimulation has a great potential to improve
plant growth and the quality of products. (Cai et al., 2014). Results of these experiments have
demonstrated that music such as rock and acid rock have negative effects on plants while
classical, jazz, and Indian classics are supportive for plant growth (O'Donnell, 1999). “The
frequency of audible sound may stimulate the opening of leaf stomata and thus, facilitate the
plant to absorb more dew, more light energy and help it to grow better. Audible sounds with
certain frequencies are expected to enable better respiration and absorption of nutrients as well.
Sound energy also gets reflected and diffracted around the leaves and may thus affect the insects
near the plants. Not only this, some researchers even report that plants also emit acoustic waves.
Plant Acoustic Frequency Technology (PAFT) uses an acoustic frequency generator to produce
appropriate acoustic waves that are similar to the frequency of the specific sound of the plant
itself. It has been reported that if the applied frequency resonates with the plant’s natural
frequency, the rate of photosynthesis and cell division increases leading to faster growth of a
plant, and hence fruit bearing time for the plants under resonant frequency treatment is reached
before the control plants.” (Chowdhury and Gupta, 2015). The results of the researchers stated to
show that different genres in music could have different or same effects on a variety of plant
species. The experiments done in the past shows that there are specific amounts of dB, kHz, and
different levels of frequency that could affect a particular plant species. 

The researchers of this study saw the potential of sound waves as a great, effective, and
environmental-friendly alternative for chemical fertilizers, so they decided to do this study on
Effect of Different Frequencies of Sound on the Germination of Sinapis alba. The researchers
chose the plant Sinapis alba or commonly known as yellow mustard since they saw that this
plant is versatile and widely used in the market, meaning a lot of producers uses fertilizers to
grow this plant. This study will show the effect, advantages, and disadvantages of the usage of
sound waves in the germination of Sinapis alba.

Mann, M. E. (2019, March 19). Greenhouse gas. Encyclopedia Britannica.

https://www.britannica.com/science/greenhouse-gas

Sanders, R. (2015, July 9). Fertilizer use responsible for increase in nitrous oxide in atmosphere.
Berkeley News. https://news.berkeley.edu/2012/04/02/fertilizer-use-responsible-for-increase-in-
nitrous-oxide-in-atmosphere/