Backster moved ahead with his studies and not only proposed the idea that plants are able to perceive environmental stimuli but also hypothesized that they can exchange information with other plants, thus posing the bases for explaining plant-plant communication. Based on the analysis of the variation of the cell membrane potential of plants under different circumstances, he hypothesized that plants and their different organs were sensitive, exhibiting electric responses under mechanical or other stimuli, which is indicative of plant/organ excitation. Bose invented various devices and instruments to measure the electrical signals in plants, of which “crescograph”, the most famous, was used to measure plant responses to various stimuli. His studies were inspired by the work of the physicist Jagadish Chandra Bose (1858–1937), who observed for the first time the ability of plants to sense the environment. Backster (1924–2013) was a polygraph examiner with the CIA. In the 1960s, Cleave Backster was the first who put forward the idea that plants have the capacity to receive and transmit messages, which is exactly what we usually refer to with the term “communication.īefore conducting experiments on plants, Dr. There was a presumptuously anthropocentric assumption that communication is only possible in the presence of a nervous system that plants lack, thus considered deaf and incapable of communication until the mid-1900s. Some possible inter-plant communications applications (biomonitoring and biostimulation), mediated by airborne signals, and some directions for future studies on this topic, are also provided. The ecological implications of these dynamics, as well as some concerns related to the potential roles of inter-plant communication in environmentally controlled experiments, have arisen. The present opinion paper briefly reviews a few reports examining the effect of infochemicals produced by emitters on receiver plants subjected to abiotic stresses typical of global climate change. Conversely, there is very limited information available on the possibility of the emission of VOCs by emitter plants under abiotic stress conditions, which may alert neighboring unstressed plants and prime these individuals (receivers) against the same stressors.

A relevant number of reports have examined the role of airborne signals in plant-plant communication, indicating that volatile organic compounds (VOCs) can prime neighboring plants against pathogen and/or herbivore attacks.

Cleve backster primary perception pdf