CRYSTALLIZATION PATTERNS REVEAL THE HOLISTIC QUALITY OF AGRICULTURAL PRODUCTS AND THE EFFICACY OF HOMEOPATHIC TREATMENTS
Maria Olga Kokornaczyk, Giovanni Dinelli, Grazia Trebbi, Lucietta Betti
Abstract: The self-assembly of particles which occurs during the evaporation induced
crystallization is a still not fully understood phenomenon; nevertheless there are several
self-assembly based methods that are successfully applied in quality analysis of foods
and agricultural products1 and even in diagnostics of several disorders in humans2.
These methods represent the so-called bottom-up analytical approaches and are able to
access the quality in terms of the organism’s health, which depends not only on the
contents of single compounds, or compound groups, but is rather a characteristic
regarding the whole organism, all its functions, and its vitality.
The droplet evaporation method (DEM), developed by our research team for quality
analysis of wheat3 and wine4, is one such approach. During the evaporation of sessile
droplets of the crystallizing solution (leakage in case of solid plant parts or products, or
the whole product in case of liquid products) patterns are formed whose shapecharacteristics
correspond to the holistic quality of the analyzed sample. We have found
that the patterns complexity3 (measured and expressed as the local connected fractal
dimension of the crystalline structures) and its symmetry exactness5 (measured by
means of the fluctuating asymmetry) are the higher the more vigorous are the analyzed
seed samples, whereas seeds characterized by low vitality or seeds subjected to
chemical stress formed patterns with poor, asymmetric forms.
Out of our studies it results that DEM, besides its capacities to visualize through the
resulting patterns the quality of foods and agricultural products, provides also a
possibility to analyze the efficacy of homeopathic preparations and might represent an
important tool for the basic research on high and ultrahigh dilutions6. Our
experimentations show that DEM patterns obtained from wheat seeds treated with
homeopathic preparations correspond in their complexity and symmetry exactness to the
vitality of the seeds (measured by means of the in vitro germination/growth tests).
Therefore DEM might be considered a tool to ‘foreseen’ the treatments effectiveness by
placing the bio-object directly into the treatment and by analyzing the resulting leakage.
This technique might thus support, or in some cases even replace, the cost- and timeconsuming
experimental trials.
Keywords: Droplet evaporation method, self-assembly, patterns, crystallization,
homeopathy, ultra high dilutions