Effect of Magnetism on Some Morphological Characters in Sweet Basil Ocimum basilicum L. (Lamiaceae) | ||
| Catrina: The International Journal of Environmental Sciences | ||
| Article 10, Volume 2, Issue 2, 2007, Pages 163-174 PDF (1.18 M) | ||
| Document Type: Original Article | ||
| Authors | ||
| Wafaa Taia* 1; Abeer Kotbi2 | ||
| 1Alexandria University, Faculty of Science, Botany Department, Alexandria-Egypt | ||
| 2Botany Department, Faculty of Science, Alexandria University, Alexandria, Egypt | ||
| Abstract | ||
| Thirty six morphological characters have been studied in sweet basil plants which were cultivated under the influence of magnetic forces. Two groups of sweet basil, Ocimum basilicum, seeds have been subjected to this study. The first group has been cultivated under three different magnetic regimes originated from permanent magnets: 1- above soil surface, 2- at soil surface and 3- under soil surface. The second group of sweet basil seeds was exposed to one to six static magnetic cycles, each last 1/2 an hour to 14.36mT with one hour interval between the two cycles. After three months of cultivations, the effects of magnetism at the different magnetic forces and different seed cycles were assessed using 36 morphological characters compared with the control group. The results obtained showed that magnetism, in the three regimes, affected the maturity of the flowers, pollen grains, and seeds and micropyles shapes. Both the magnet positions and magnetic forces affect the examined characters. The more affected characters were the root and shoot systems lengths; the number of lateral branches; the number of leaves and their sizes and color as well as the lengths of aerial branches carrying the inflorescences. The most positively affected plants were those with the magnet above soil surface, followed by the magnet under soil surface. The least affected plants are those exposed to the surface magnet. Plants resulted from few cycles of exposure to the seeds, have better morphological characters than the control ones. Whereas plants resulted from three cycle's seeds were the most exhausted plants. Those resulted from four cycles seeds started to be morphologically adapted, but the physiological processes of the plants seemed to be disturbed with the increase in the number of cycles. Number of lateral branches and total number of leaves increased significantly at four, five and six cycles of seed exposure but the seeds became fragile and the pollen grains shape has been slightly changed. | ||
| Keywords | ||
| Flower maturation; Lamiaceae; Leaf morphology; Magnetic forces; Ocimum basilicum; Pollen morphology; seed morphology; taxonomic characters; vegetative morphology | ||
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