Considera

I am sharing a result of my experiment of effect of silicea 30 C on Mustard seed Germination in my Garden ....

Used potency = silicea 30 C

Used seed = Indian Mustard seed. Plant name :-Brassica juncea

Preparation:-


1. control :- Mustard seed treatment with water for 20 min as seen in Red Cap.

2. Silicea 30 C :- 5 pills of silicea 30 C mixed with 500 ml water ...and mustard seed treated with same water for 20 min as seen in blue Cap..


3. Seeds were transferred in one pot having a plastic boundary for separating two groups..both groups exposed to same type of soil, water irrigation and sunlight condition as they r in one pot only.......left side of the pot soil consists of silicea treated seeds and right side of the soil consists of control seeds.

4.results after 1 week...

u can see the difference in almost doubled seed germination and growth of silicea 30 C treated seeds (on left) Vs water control seeds (On right)..
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Silicea 30 C

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Water control

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[Lets discuss the results]
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Thanks for sharing your experiment. It's great to have the photos too. The demonstration / experiment is simple and uncluttered and anyone can understand it. Fantastic.

Discussion? Well, on the face of it the silicea has assisted more seeds to germinate than seeds from the same batch that received identical treatment but did not have the remedy.

If one looks under the face, as a sceptic should, a few questions arise about the procedure, such as: would it have been even better to use sac lac rather than just water as the control because the sugar may have had the effect and not the trans-Avogadro silicea? Can this experiment be repeated? Were there any unintended effects, such as on the soil? Were there longer lasting effects - positive or negative - on the mustard? Would it work germinating the seeds on wet tissue (to suggest if the effect was on the plant or the soil)?

I hope it is clear that this is not a criticism of what is a very elegant and eloquent experiment but a few things that come to mind.

With appreciation


Mark

Hello Mark, cityboy et al. This will be my first post on this forum.

One reason this experiment is interesting is that if improved and extended it may perhaps prove an effect of homeopathy. But sofar it is of course way to sketchy to do that.

Apart from this I know way too little about agrohomeopathy to have any idea of the relevance of this type of experiment. I am mainly discussing it based on general experimental design principles.

It may be premature to discuss this small experiment as if it would have scientific ambitions - but what the heck, Mark already started, so I give it a go.

All comments are intended to help cityboy (or others) improve the experiment, if they would want to devote their time to that.

I agree with all of Mark's comments except the one about excluding soil. It is more realistic with soil. Differences in soil will only be random (not systematic) unless different soil mixtures were used for the two seed sets.To handle this randomness, the standard method is to have replicates, i e more pots.
However it is more difficult to manage the cultures uniformly with soil. E.g. sowing at the same depth.
One can say: other conditions than treatment should be kept as equal between seed batches (treated vs untreated) as possible, and as uniform as possible across the "field"=pot or pots (to avoid random error=noise) but not at the price of making the experimental conditions unrealistic.

Further comments:
Why not state the number of seeds sown and the number of plants that resulted for the treated and untreated batches?

Why not have separate pots for the two types of seed? This will exclude possible interaction via soil and roots between treated and not treated seeds, which can be difficult to disentangle. And did the dividing wall cast any shadows?

It looks like a lot of seed for just one pot.

The seedlings are quite unevenly distributed. Why? Where they not sown at the same depth or where conditions different in different parts of the pot? It looks like research conditions were not kept as uniform as would be desired.

It looks like seeds at the surface. More on the treated side. What happened to the untreated seeds that don't appear at surface? Was it sown deeper?

It looks like pretty much ungerminated seed. Why? Was the seed old? I think it would be better to use seed with fair to good germination rate, to exclude any effects from poor germination ability (unless you want to study the effect of Silicea to help poor seed - which perhaps is something Silicea can do?).

It looks like soil and some plants are water-logged, esp on the treated-seed-side. Use less water and take care to water more uniformly (somehow).

It would be intresting to see a photo one week later too.

cheers
Anders

Hello,
I would like to talk with you about your experiment. I am getting ready to conduct homeopathic experiments on seed germination as well. Can we confer?
Sandra
slhick@cox.net