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