According to Professor Lilah Hadani, the starting point for the research team was the assumption that plants could benefit greatly in evolutionary terms if they could make sounds, since they are surrounded by creatures that react to sounds in one way or another.
Obviously, for humans, plants are “silent”. So the scientists decided to test the ultrasonic range, which is inaudible to the human ear.
To do this, they took tomatoes and tobacco expressed in greenhouses and brought special ultrasonic microphones to them. And the technique was really able to detect the “speech” of plants.
“It turned out that plants make sounds. And these sounds carry information“, – Hadani shared the discovery.
At rest, tomatoes only occasionally made sounds in the range from 40 to 80 kHz. However, in the event of stress, whether it was lack of water or a cut, the intervals between “exclamations” were significantly reduced, as if the plant began to “scream”.
In order to give an idea of how plants “talk”, scientists had to speed up the recording, as well as lower the frequency of sounds. As a result, the sounds made by plants began to resemble crackling.
Hadani said that under different types of stress, the plants made different sounds. That is, these are not just chaotic fluctuations in the air – they carry information.
Presumably, insects and small animals can hear these sounds, which allows them to more effectively interact with the plant world.
As for how plants do this, it most likely happens when there are ruptures in the vessels due to the formation of air bubbles.
This discovery can be useful in agriculture, as it will allow you to monitor the condition of grown plants simply by “eavesdropping” on them, which will make it possible to quickly respond to diseases, lack of moisture and other problems.
In the future, scientists intend to find out whether plants are able to somehow respond to the “screams” of stressed neighbors.
