In China farms, vegetables grow to like Beethoven

Beijing: A Chinese farmer has boosted the output and quality of his vegetables by playing them classical music, state media reported on Tuesday.
“Plants or animals (can) feel music because they are living things,” Ye Fei, a farmer from Ningbo in eastern China’s Zhejiang province, was quoted by the China Daily as saying.
Last March, Ye installed speakers around the 10 tents where his vegetables are grown, alternately playing Beethoven’s Symphony No 6 ‘Pastoral’ in the morning and piano sonatas in the afternoon, the report said. Among 15 types of vegetables grown in the tents, five kinds had grown much more quickly, Ye said. A visit to the northeastern city of Dalian earlier this year prompted Ye’s musical method after he saw local growers using “sound wave instruments” to help their vegetables grow, the report added.
“Some growers told me after listening to the sound, the output of their cucumbers could be raised by some 20% and they even tasted better,” he said.
But agricultural experts remain skeptical. Wang Yuhong, head of the Ningbo Agricultural Science Academy’s Vegetables Research Institute, doubted whether the experiment was effective.