Noor Anilizawatima Sulong, Noor Izzah Mohd Khalil, Mohd Ikhwan Dahari and Anis Athirah Zakaria
Faculty of Pharmacy, Universiti Teknologi MARA (UiTM), Malaysia
Mechanical stress can greatly affect the development of plants. Stress produced by music has been found to induce a positive effect on the plants growth. The aim of this study was to examine the in vitro seed germination of two Grammatophyllum species when exposed to five different music genres. The Grammatophyllum species used were G. hybrid and G. stapeliiflorum while the music genres were Instrumental, Rock, Hip hop, Yassin and Ballad. Each group of seeds culture were exposed to different music genre for 8 hours starting from 9 am to 6 pm every day in a six months period and kept in the dark for the first three months. All cultures were maintained on half-strength Murashige and Skoog media supplemented with 30 g/L sucrose, 0.5 mg/L 6-benzylaminopurine (BAP), 2 g/L peptone, 1 g/L activated charcoal and 2.5 g/L gelrite. At the end of the experiment, it was found that music exposure had a positive effect on the seeds germination as compared to the untreated control group. For G. hybrid species, the highest shoots number counted 19.33±3.79 was observed on seeds exposed to Yassin. The highest shoots length measured was 2.01±1.10 cm when it was exposed to Rocks. In contrast, G. stapeliiflorum species showed the highest number of shoots of 12.00±2.64 when exposed to Ballad and the highest shoot length was 1.00±0.38 cm when it was exposed to Instrumental. The findings showed that different species of orchids needs a different type of music to influence its germination and growth rate.
Keywords: Grammatophyllum, music, in vitro seed germination, plant tissue culture, orchid.