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HARRIS MORAN SEED TECHNOLOGY
NEWSLETTER - 5
MIR - Mysterious seed enhancement

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Question: What do you get when you combine the following two thoughts?
  • Old Frankenstein Movies
    If you’ve ever watched an old Frankenstein movie, somewhere in the picture, you’ll see two giant electrodes with an electrical arc running from the bottom of the electrodes to the top. Impressive, yet sinister.
  • Vitamins and Anti-oxidants
    Vitamins manufacturers like to claim their product has anti-oxidants inside. These "good" anti-oxidants eliminate the "bad" free radicals in your body helping to make you a healthier person.

Answer: These thoughts are combined in a process called Molecular Impulse Response (MIR). Which is a seed enhancement process currently being marketed.

Well OK, technically speaking, this may not exactly be true, but it helps to illustrate this seed enhancement technique. Let me explain further.

Seed under stress

When seed is planted during an environmental stress like heat, drought or flooding, chemical reactions in the seed may not go as smoothly as when the seed is under little or no stress. Under stress, the cell may produce "free radicals" that are electrically charged in a way that enables them to pull apart or breakdown compounds that are needed for normal plant growth. The more free radicals, the more damage to the seed and plantlet.

CONTROL carrots (variety: Cellobunch) in INCOTEC's Ontario production-scale  field trial (14 rows each of MIR and Control X Length of Field). These samples pulled by Jim Robinson of Stokes Seeds. According to Robinson, high percentage of culls this year is due to intense spring flooding. MIR carrots (variety: Cellobunch) grown beside controls at left. Incidence of culls was reduced by 40%, indicating improved stress tolerance.

Frankenstein

MIR is a process in which seed is placed between an anode and a cathode much like the two electrodes you might have seen in an old Frankenstein movie. However, there is no flashy electrical arc, and in fact, the current is usually only a fraction of a micro-amp (a very, very small amount of electricity). This small amount of electricity does travel from one electrode to the other going through the seed.

Anti-oxidants

The inventors of this process claim that doing this at the correct electrical strength and for the correct amount of time will set into motion reactions inside the seed that result in the production of anti-oxidants which deactivate those harmful free radicals that want to break things down in the seed and plant. Anti-oxidant promoters in the vitamin industry put forth much the same theory when humans take vitamins with anti-oxidants.

The MIR treatment only puts in motion the reactions needed to produce anti-oxidants. The seed needs to sit for about 30 days after the treatment for these reactions to be complete enough to obtain noticeably improved seed performance, especially under stress conditions.

The process is being marketed as " Stress Guard" by a company called Pro Seed Technologies out of Blissfield, Michigan. If you’d like more information contact John Burke at (516) 628-3291. The U.S. patent on the process is U.S. patent: 5,740,627, and the companies website is www.proseedtech.com

Keith
k.kubik@hmclause.com

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