EFFECT OF PULSED MAGNETIC FIELDS TO THE GROWTH RATE OF GREEN SOYBEAN

Mohd Zikrillah Zawahir, Muhammad Saiful Badri Mansor, Ruzairi Abdul Rahim*, Ahmad Ridwan Wahap, Zulkarnay Zakaria, Mohamad Shukri Abdul Manaf

Abstract

This research is to investigate and makes preliminary comparison effect of pulse magnetic field to the growth rate of green soybean with sinusoidal wave signal and variety of magnetic field value. A circuit had been designed and developed to generate pulse magnetic field that consist excitation ferrite-core coil, diode, power MOSFET, resistor, function generator as signal generator and power supply. Selection of excitation coil and designed circuit had ability to produce a stable value of magnetic field value and 50 Hz frequency became main critical characteristic. Selected green soybean seeds were exposed to three types of waveforms, which are sinus wave, square wave, sawtooth wave and 50 Hz as frequency value was used for each type of waveforms. In the experiment, the range between 3 milli Gauss until 600 milli Gauss were being used as magnetic value which that involve 400 seeds arranged in a line for each magnetic field values. Values of magnetic field had been determined by the distance between source (excitation ferrite-core coil) and subject (green soybean). 7 day of experiment had done and sample was taken randomly. Experiment being separate into two parts where the first part was the first 3 days in the dark and second part was balance 4 day of experiment under daylight. From results sine wave, 6 magnetic field values at root inhibit germination rate while 6 magnetic field values at hypocotyls part has speed up growth rate. Moreover, growth rate at leaf part also has speed up but only for 70 mG magnetic field. For results sawtooth, only 3 magnetic values show speed up progress on growth rate. While others shows sign of decreasing of germination and growth rate for root and leaf part. Lastly for square wave, all the 6 magnetic field seeds show speed up on germination and growth rate for root, hypocotyls and leaf.