Homoeopathic dilutions: is there a potential for application in organic plant production?
Stephan M. Baumgartner, Devika Shah, Peter Heusser & André Thurneysen
Introduction
Medical treatment with homoeopathic potencies can be of great interest to organic agriculture since this way of
treatment relies totally upon natural substances and inherent self-regulation principles. One might therefore ask
whether homoeopathic potencies could also be of any use in organic plant production. However, the main condition
for such use is that plants or microbes are actually able to react to homoeopathic dilutions at all. This is not evident a
priori, since preparation of homoeopathic potencies involves successive logarithmic dilution steps (1:10 for x (D)
potencies, 1:100 for c (C) potencies), some of which end up as quite high dilution ratios. Whilst Arnica 6x (D6), for
instance, still contains material Arnica compounds at a concentration of 10-6, Arnica 30c (C30) with a concentration
of 10-60 surely does not. Sensitivity of plants or microbes to highly diluted homoeopathic potencies therefore has to
be investigated thoroughly.