Scientific Aspects of Agnihotra: Effect of Agnihotra and Agnihotra Ash on Seed Germination (Part 5)

Scientist

Quantity of food worldwide–especially in developing countries–continues to be an urgent issue.

Quality of food in developed countries–especially in the age of the spreading of the GMO scourge–is a less publicised issue (in part due to obfuscation by vested interests).

In both cases the proven potential of Homa Organic Farming in yielding greater quantities and quality of food should not escape the notice of all.

See the following article for effects of Homa on seed germination–the first step in our food chain.  

 

By Dr. Ulrich Berk (Germany)

Earlier we have covered beneficial effects of Agnihotra and Agnihotra Ash on air, soil, and water resources, as well as on radioactive radiation. As environmental pollution naturally also affects plants as it affects us humans, it can be expected that both Agnihotra and Agnihotra Ash have beneficial effects on the growth and health of plants as well as their resistance against pests.

The easiest way to experiment about that is by examining the germination of seeds, both in Agnihotra atmosphere and using Agnihotra ash.

Quite a number of such experiments have been done, some of them already quite some time ago.

Germination of rice seeds were part of two Ph.D. theses done at the Vivekananda University in Bangalore in the first years of this millenium. Rice seeds were put in petri dishes on top of a filter paper which was soaked in water. Agnihotra was performed, and  root length, shoot length, fresh weight, and dry weight were measured and compared with control. There were three controls: One without any disciplines of Agnihotra, one with just the mantras, one with Agnihotra fire but without mantras and offerings. Result was that Agnihotra lead to a significant increase of root length, shoot length, and fresh weight compared to control. Also it was obvious that the effect of Agnihotra is more than the added effects of mantras and the fire alone.

Interesting that one study specifically examined whether it makes a difference whether a male person or a female person utters the mantras. No surprise that there was no difference – which hopefully helps to remove one prejudice still prevalent in some countries.

The authors attribute the positive effects of Agnihotra on seed germination to the Agnihotra fumes. This seems to be a premature assumption – in experiments on water purification we could show that water gets purified even when the water bottles are closed (and no fumes get into touch with the water). That means there must be some energy field around Agnihotra which leads to this effect. About this Energy Field of Agnihotra we will talk in a later issue of this newsletter.

The effect of performing Agnihotra in a room where seeds are kept was subject of these two studies just mentioned. Other studies examined the effect of Agnihotra Ash on the germination of seeds. One quite comprehensive study was done a couple of years ago in Fergusson College, Pune, India. Again the seeds were kept on some filter paper in petri dishes. Watering was done with:

1. a) tap water,
2. b) control ash water (1 gm control ash + 100 ml water) and
3. c) Agnihotra ash water (1 gm Agnihotra ash + 100 ml water)

(Control ash is the ash you get by burning the same ingredients as used for Agnihotra – but without the disciplines of Agnihotra: No mantras, not done at sunrise or sunset, and the vessel – although made from copper – does not have the pyramid shape of our Agnihotra pyramid.)

Seeds of vigna aconitifolia (mat bean) and vigna unguiculata (cow pea) were taken as experimental material. Seeds were allowed to germinate and germination was observed every 24 hrs.

The results show clearly that control ash improves rate of germination as compared with plain water, but Agnihotra ash does so much more:

After getting this encouraging first result, more experiments were done, trying to figure out whether all the different disciplines of Agnihotra are really necessary to get the full effect. For that, variations of the different parameters were used:

1. Time: sunrise time, sunset time and any time other than sunrise and sunset
2. Mantra: with mantra (sunrise and sunset) and without mantra
3. Rice: brown rice (unpolished) and white rice (polished)
4. Ghee: cow ghee and buffalo ghee
5. Vessel: Agnihotra copper pyramid and steel pot of same size and shape

Fires were done with altogether 48 different combinations of these parameters, and the resulting ashes were used for germination of mung beans, providing same environmental conditions. After two weeks plant growth was measured by considering shoot and root length and put in some graph:

The peaks are there when all the disciplines of Agnihotra were properly followed. You can clearly see – if you make any change, the results are worse than performing Agnihotra properly.

Means we really have to be exact in our practice of Agnihotra!

Germination of seeds has also been done adding Agnihotra ash / control ash / plain water after the seeds were put into soil (and not just kept on filter paper on petri dishes). Results also clearly showed that Agnihotra ash gives better germination (root lenght, shoot length, total weight) than control ash . Control ash gave better results than plain water which is not surprising as any ash contains certain nutrients. Surprising though is the difference between Agnihotra ash and control ash – as these two ashes do not show a significant difference in chemical analysis! This will be topic of  further discussion.

As sprouting experiments are relatively easy to do, some have been done on school level also. Some time ago by Boumika Patil (Amalner, India) did this for some contest in the field of environmental studies, and her project won the first prize! See her photo.

Also you  can try similar experiments at home. Will be quite interesting to see yourself! And please send photos of your results.

 

Scientific Aspects of Agnihotra: Growth of plants in Agnihotra Atmosphere and with Agnihotra Ash (Part 6)

Scientist

Seeing is believing, it is said. The following articles document, in some detail, the positive results of Agnihotra and Agnihotra ash on growth of plants, plant resistance to disease and pests, shelf life and other parameters of quality, taste and quantity.

It is difficult to underestimate the potential such data has for a world beset by climate influences causing difficulties to agriculture.

 

By Dr. Ulrich Berk (Germany)

In the previous article we saw that Agnihotra Ash helps seeds to germinate better. The same result we get when seeds are kept for germination in a room where Agnihotra is performed regularly.

These are very simple experiments which everybody can easily perform at home also.

We again suggest that you try yourself – and then please also send us photos of your results.

Definitely the germination stage is very important for the life of plants. But unless we are just interested in sprouts it is important to see how plants grow further until they are harvested. Will plants also grow faster in the later stages, will there be a stronger resistance against diseases and pests, etc.? What about the quantity, the quality of the produce, the nutritional value, the shelf life?

There were a lot of observations and reports from people performing Agnihotra in their gardens as well as from farmers who performed Agnihotra in their fields and used Agnihotra Ash for irrigation and for preparing different sprays.

One relatively simple experiment was done in Fergusson College, Pune, India.

Two plants were maintained providing same amount of water, light and other environmental conditions. One was kept in a room where Agnihotra was performed and another was kept in another room where Agnihotra was not performed. See the difference in growth of these two plants:

Although the experiment was not done under ideal conditions, still the different in growth of these two plants is obvious. Ideally for such an experiment there should be a difference of three kilometres – but in this case the two plants were grown in two different rooms of the same building, so also the first plant got definitely SOME of the Agnihotra effect.

This is just one example. More systematic research has been done by Dr. Selvaraj at the Institute of Commercial Horticulture, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, Ooty, India. Yield, quality of the produce, and disease resistance were examined, comparing:

• Organic farming system
• Organic farming system + Agnihotra
• Conventional farming
• Absolute control

Following some of the results.

Effect of organic farming on growth and yield of Rose cv. Passion

Treatments	Fresh flower wt/ plant (g)	Stalk length (cm)	Flower diameter (cm)	No. of flowers/ plant/year	Shelf life of flowers (days)
Organic	19.54	85.59	6.81	26.54	14
Organic +Agnihotra	21.34	88.98	7.54	28.80	16
Conventional	12.98	75.98	5.54	16.70	3
Absolute Control	8.65	67.23	3.54	12.65	1.5
CD at 5%	0.85	2.95	0.55	1.25	–

Organic plus Agnihotra gave best results in all the parameters which were checked.

Flowers are normally grown in greenhouses, and because of high humidity fungal diseases are quite common. A study showed that Agnihotra can control one common fungal disease, powdery mildew (characteristic are white powdery spots on the leaves and stems).

Effect of organic farming on the incidence of Powdery mildew of Rose cv. Passion

Treatments	Powdery mildew (Spaerotheca pannosa) (%)
Organic	4.4
Organic +Agnihotra	2.9
Conventional	12.3
Control	25.9

Another experiment was done on potatoes. Yield and the occurrence of late blight were examined. (The disease late blight affects mainly potatoes and tomatoes – and which led to the Irish potato famine of the 1840s, two million people died or emigrated from Ireland then!).

Effect of Agnihotra on pest complex of potato cv. Kufri jyoti

Treatments	Late blight (%)	Yield (t/ha)
	90 days after planting
Organic	45	8.4
Organic +Agnihotra	11	9.6
Conventional	65	4.2
Absolute Control	80	2.5

 

Other salient findings were:

• Organic farming with Agnihotra in Carnation recorded higher performance for plant height (95.43 cm), stalk length (93.24 cm), flower diameter (7.76 cm), number of flowers/plant/year (9.78), shelf life (14.43 days) compared to other treatments.
• In Carnation, Organic farming with Agnihotra showed higher disease resistance.
• In Gerbera, Organic farming with Agnihotra recorded higher performance for number of flowers 20, shelf life 16 days.
• In Gerbera, Organic farming with Agnihotra showed higher disease resistance for leaf spot, fusarium wilt.
• Among the four treatments Organic farming with Agnihotra in Potato recorded higher performance for yield (9.6 t/ha) and showed increased disease resistance.

These were quite impressive results of the first systematic study on yield, health, disease resistance, and shelf life of plants.

In the next article we will look into

1. the underlying mechanisms – how does Agnihotra achieve these positive effects, and
2. how to make use of these effects on farm level.

Scientific Aspects of Agnihotra: Effect of Agnihotra Atmosphere and Agnihotra Ash on plant growth and soil health (part 7)

Scientist

By Dr. Ulrick Berk (Germany)

In the last issue we have discussed the effects of Agnihotra and Agnihotra Ash on the growth and disease resistence of plants – both under lab conditions and in a greenhouse.

But what are the effects in field conditions? The first systematic study on Homa Organic Farming was done in the Agricultural University in Palampur, Himachal Pradesh (a Northern State in India, at the edge of the Himalaya mountains).

Interesting how this research project started.

In 2006,  Karin Heschl and Bruce Johnson, both experts on Homa Organic Farming who live in India, gave presentations at a conference on organic farming.  After Karin’s presentation in which she mentioned considerable increase in the yield of mangoes in Homa Therapy atmosphere, one participant of the conference, Dr. DS Rathore, at that time Vice-Chancellor of the Palampur Agricultural University,  expressed his protest afterwards– saying that it is just impossible that burning cow dung and ghee and uttering some simple mantras could bring about such effects.

Another senior agricultural scientist, Dr. RK Pathak, saw this and talked to Dr. Rathore – saying that is is unscientific to just claim the Homa method cannot work. A scientific approach would be to set up an experiment and show that the method does not work.

Dr. Rathore agreed, so they were setting up a small Homa Organic Farm on the land of the university. In 2007 Reiner Sczypior, a Homa volunteer from Austria who then stayed in India, set up the resonance system. On that farm during several years a lot of research was conducted. Soon it became clear that the original aim – showing that Homa methods do not work – could not be achieved. On the contrary, they got many good results.

They studied the effect of organic nutrients including Agnihotra Ash on crop productivity and soil health.

Medicinal plants like lemongrass, wild marigold, and aloe vera were chosen.

With lemongrass, there was a significant increase in the yield attributes viz plant height, number of leaves and plant spread and ultimately the yield of lemongrass increased with the addition of organics over the control.

Highest biological yield (7833 kg per hectare) was obtained in the treatment with organic manure + Agnihotra Ash + sowing according to the moon calendar,  while lowest yield (2833 kg per hectare) was obtained in control + not following the moon calendar. Second best treatments was that using organic manure + Agnihotra Ash, but not following the moon calendar.

Also the oil content was best in treatments with Agnihotra Ash – up to seven times higher than control!

Similar results were with wild marigold and with aloe vera. The authors sum up their findings as follows:

“To sum up, it has been clearly demonstrated in this experiment that in lemon grass, wild marigold and aloe vera Agnihotra Ash was significantly superior to other organic treatments.“  

The second part of their research was about soil health, a very important factor also for future production (and declining soil health is a big problem worldwide because of conventional farming).

Following the results they got regarding soil health:

• Homa environment inhibited growth of harmful bacteria like Fusarium solani, F.oxysporum, Rhizoctonia solani, Sclerotinia sclerotiorum, Sclerotium rolfsii, Phoma medicaginis and Alternaria brassicae;
• Maximum inhibition ranged (29-42%) recorded in Agnihotra hut followed by Tryambakam hut (8-32).
• Homa environment had adverse impact on appearance and population build up of pests like tomato fruit and shoot borer and semi loper;
• Homa ash possessed deterrent capabilities for management of these insects as compared to untreated tomato plants.
• Applications of as dust in soil at transplanting & further supplementation as drench at regular 15 days interval was effective in management of these insects.
• Effects of Agnihotra Ash on the growth of soil borne pathogens and bio agents indicated that all organisms were inhibited by Agnihotra Ash;
• Aerial micro flora count showed interesting observations:
• Bacterial counts in room where Agnihotra was performed got reduced significantly.
• In room with only fire did not show any significant change in microbial (bacterial, fungal, and actinomycetes) counts! This shows that control of harmful bacteria is actually the effect of Agnihotra performed properly – just having a fire does not have these effects.
• In total of 70 beneficial bacterial isolates, 18 isolates selected as phosphate solubilizers.
• 18 showed IAA production in range of 0.4-15.6 μg/ mL
• (IAA – Indole Acetic Acid – production is a major property of rhizosphere bacteria that stimulate and facilitate plant growth.)
• 7 isolates showed siderophore production in range of 3-14 activity diameters. (Siderophores make iron available to plants.)
• 12 bacterial isolates showed Ammonia production.
• Isolates isolated during and after the Agnihotra were found to show a variety of PGPR traits. (PGPR: Plant Growth Promoting Rhizobacteria.)
• These appear attractive towards development of microbial inoculants and enrichment of various organic manures.

These results made it to the front page of the Journal “Indian Express“. “Bhasm“.

Scientific Aspects of Agnihotra: Soil and Agriculture (Part 8)

Scientist

By Dr. Ulrich Berk (Germany)

In the last article we talked about the experiments on Homa Farming done at Palampur Agricultural University, Himachal Pradesh, Northern India. The experiments showed increased yields, better disease resistance, and better quality of the produce.

The second part of their research was about soil health, a very important factor for future production.

More research was done on the effects of Homa Farming on soil health at Dharwad Agricultural University, Karnataka, Southern India. Four M.Sc. theses brought some interesting results. But before we are discussing these results (in the next article), let us first look deeper into the situation of our topsoil which is of utmost importance for the future of mankind.

A Sanskrit text written in around 1500 BC noted, “Upon this handful of soil our survival depends. Husband it and it will grow our food, our fuel, and our shelter and surround us with beauty. 

Abuse it and the soil will collapse and die, taking humanity with it.”

(Quoted from: George Monbiot, Ploughing On Regardless, The Guardian, 25th March 2015

Thus abuse of soil mentioned as a possibility 3500 years as developed into a likely scenario now as we can see from recent reports from FAO, the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations from two years ago.

An article in Scientific American makes it very clear that we live in kind of emergency situation, see the following article: 

ROME (Thomson Reuters Foundation) – Generating three centimeters of top soil takes 1,000 years, and if current rates of degradation continue all of the world’s top soil could be gone within 60 years, a senior UN official said on Friday.

About a third of the world’s soil has already been degraded, Maria-Helena Semedo of the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) told a forum marking World Soil Day.

The causes of soil destruction include chemical-heavy farming techniques, deforestation which increases erosion, and global warming. The earth under our feet is too often ignored by policymakers, experts said.

“Soils are the basis of life,” said Semedo, FAO’s deputy director general of natural resources. “Ninety five percent of our food comes from the soil.”

Unless new approaches are adopted, the global amount of arable and productive land per person in 2050 will be only a quarter of the level in 1960, the FAO reported, due to growing populations and soil degradation.

Soils play a key role in absorbing carbon and filtering water, the FAO reported. Soil destruction creates a vicious cycle, in which less carbon is stored, the world gets hotter, and the land is further degraded.

“We are losing 30 soccer fields of soil every minute, mostly due to intensive farming,” Volkert Engelsman, an activist with the International Federation of Organic Agriculture Movements told the forum at the FAO’s headquarters in Rome.

“Organic (farming) may not be the only solution but it’s the single best (option) I can think of.”

(http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/only-60-years-of-farming-left-if-soil-degradation-continues)

This article advocates organic farming, definitely the first step we have to take. But as pollution of soil has gone so far, that will not be enough. Homa Therapy techniques have to be applied to restore soil helth, as the following article written by Shree Vasant Paranjpe shows:

HOW HOMA FARMING WORKS

Vasant Paranjpe

The soil, water, atmosphere, subsoil water are all polluted by the metallic, nonmetallic and gaseous toxicants of different types. 

The soil in large areas of forest is nearly dead.

THE SOIL NEEDS TO BE REJUVENATED FIRST BY HOMA THERAPY. 

In the rejuvenated soil different types of microorganisms, starting from the level of viruses, bacteria, fungi, algae, thrive. 

Thus, a healthy micro-flora and micro-fauna is created.

This gives rise to a micro environment or micro-system which is comparatively less toxic to the growing plants. 

The soil which has now become a living soil because of the presence of micro organisms has all the chemical components useful for life in the form of carbon, hydrogen and oxygen. According to modern theory, these three together form life in the form of bacteria. We have e.g. nitrogen fixing bacteria, also bacteria working on phosphorus content of soil 

After the creation of such micro environment, creatures like earthworms thrive. They eat the soil, digest it and again replenish the soil. 

It has been found that when Agnihotra ash is added to normal soil it increases the water soluble phosphate content of the soil and the nutrients are absorbed readily by the root hair of the plant. 

Absorption of mega nutrients like Nitrogen, Phosphorus, Potash, because of small cells and active transport is helped by Homa atmosphere. 

We have to tell the people this is how Homa farming works.

When you perform Agnihotra and YAJNYA or other HOMAS in a garden, an atmosphere is created that is conducive to growing and therefore attracts the nutrients, insects, microorganisms and animals that would be happy and thrive in that environment. 

This, of course, is because nature is so wonderful, it automatically benefits the soil and the plant, and the plant thrives. 

Same thing happens when you put the ash or use Agnihotra ash water but it works mere for the plants individually – by putting the ash around the individual plants or in the beds or spraying the plants, those elements that are best for that plant are attracted to it and it thrives. 

Of course, we have to use basic operations of farming like weeding, organic composting, spraying with Agnihotra Ash solution, etc. 

PRACTICE OF HOMA, HOWEVER, IS THE KEY. 

These are clear guidelines for sustainable farming practices Shree Vasant gives. The article was written in 2008 or little earlier. 

Good that in the meantime quite some research has been done some which confirms by means of modern science that Homa techniques really work well to restore soil health. This research work was mainly done at Dharwad Agricultural University, Karnataka, South India. We will have a closer look at the results in the next article.

Scientific Aspects of Agnihotra: Soil and Agriculture continued (Part 9)

Scientist

By Dr. Ulrich Berk (Germany)

In the last article we quoted reports of FAO (the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations ) saying that farming only 60 years of farming would be left if conventional farming would continue like today. 

Also we quoted Shree Vasant Paranjpe stating that the soil has to be rejuvinated first by Homa Therapy, thus creating a healthy micro-flora and micro-fauna.

This is the claim based on Vedic Knowledge.

To which extent could this claim be validated by modern agricultural sciences? 

A lot of research work was done on the effects of Homa Farming on soil health at Dharwad Agricultural University, Karnataka, Southern India under the guidance of Dr. Pramod Basarkar. Four M.Sc. theses had the subject of Homa Farming – one each concentrated on studying growth, yield, disease resistance, occurence of pests, and effect on soil parameters. 

Crops planted were soybeans, cabbage, tomato, and Okra (ladies’ fingers, a vegetable quite popular in Asian and African countries), one thesis each concentrating on one crop.

Results were very good showing increase in yield, better quality of the produce etc. Today we want to just look at the effect of Homa Farming on soil quality,  soil health.

There were considerable improvements – although all these four studies were only carried out for one season! Would be interesting to see how the soil improves even further if Homa Farming would continue for a couple of years.

The four studies examined nutrient content and biological properties of soil, mainly beneficial microorganisms. But did not go into physical properties like soil texture and structure, pore space, permeability, water holding capacity, etc.).

Soil nutrients: normally there is a distincton made between macronutrients and micronutrients. Macronutrients are nutrients which are required in large quantities for plant growth. The primary macronutrients are N, P, K – Nitrogen, Phosphorus, and Potassium.

Micronutrients are of same importance for plant growth as macronutrients – only they are needed in smaller quantities.

Microorganisms:  beneficial bacteria and fungi help to decompose organic matter in soil, fix nitrogen from the atmosphere, solubilise phosphorus, etc., and thus make nutrients available to plants. A soil without such microorganisms is dead – not really a soil in proper sense.

Actinomycetes have characteristics of both bacteria and fungi. Their role in soil is mainly to break down organic matter difficult to degrade.

Soil dehydrogenases are used as an indicator of the activity of soil microorganisms, also they play an important role in the biological oxidation of soil organic matter 

Soil phosphatase activity plays a fundamental role in the transformation of P from soil organic matter into a forms available to plants.

Following the change of soil parameters, especially soil microbial count and content of macro- and micronutrients, compared with control without Homa.

(These studies examined up to 18 different treatment combinations, like soil application of Agnihotra Ash OR soil application of Homa Biosol. Here we do not want to got into these fine details – as in Homa Farming we use BOTH Agnihotra Ash (as well as other Homa ashes) and Homa Biosol.)

Table 1. Effect of Homa Organic Farming on Soil Parameters

It can be clearly seen that Homa Organic Farming improves soil quality in all the parameters measured. These results were obtained after just one season. It would be worthwhile to continue such a project and see how soil health improves within a longer period, say three years!

This time we concentrated on the effects of Homa Organic Farming on soil quality. 

In the next article we will examine how plant growth, yield, quality of the produce were affected, and also see what was the effect on plant health and disease resistance.