What if a Mozart tune could lull a virus to sleep and save a vegetable patch? Gilles Josuan, farmer from Bouches-du-Rhône is convinced of the therapeutic power of music on plants. This zucchini monoculture claims to have succeeded in saving his cucurbits attacked by the deadly mosaic virus. Rather than pulling up his plants, the farmer turned to an unconventional method: playing music to his vegetables. It was by going to the site of the company Genodics at the origin of this concept that he thought of trying this treatment with “music proteins”. In his greenhouses, he offers a musical cure to his plants in sessions of 5 to 7 minutes each night. No more so as not to tire them, he explains to the newspaper Le Figaro which reports this unusual story. The company might seem far-fetched in the opinion of the most Cartesian farmers. Yet Gilles Josuan realizes that music therapy heals his zucchini. “Today, the virus is still present but it is inhibited by the music and my vegetables bear no trace of it. So I can market them again,” he says. Other farmers could learn from it. But the method is more complex than it appears. A melody must be adapted to each pathology.
Scientific tests to be carried out
The “proteodie” is the name of this intriguing method, not scientifically proven, developed by the company Genodics. According to this, the vibrations of the music would have the ability to fight against the diseases of certain plants, de facto reducing the use of pesticides.
“To put it simply, during the process of protein synthesis, amino acids produce notes. A melody specific to each protein is thus emitted”, explains an engineer from the company quoted by Le Figaro. It then remains to find the right melody to inhibit or stimulate the synthesis of the protein linked to the pathology that we want to target. Many winegrowers currently use this method according to Le Figaro.
It remains to scientifically validate this process. Genodics collaborates with the University of Cergy, in the Paris region, to conduct experiments and provide scientific support for this “therapy” through music.
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