Horia Radu Criveanu

THE INFLUNENCE OF MAGNETIC FIELD ON SILYBUM MARIANUM SEED GERMINATION

Silybum marianum is an annual or biennial plant native to the Mediterranean area (Mossa et al. 1987). It was clearly demonstrated that silymarin exerts a strong protective effect against oxidative stress damage at the protein level which has a direct connection to its use as hepatoprotector for chronic inflammatory liver diseases and liver cirrhosis (Herman et al. 2011). Silymarin was proved to protect liver and kidney cells from toxic effects of drugs (Meghreji Moin et al.). The objective of the research was to observe the influence of magnetic field upon seed germination. Silybum marianum seeds were exposed to magnetic field action for three different time intervals 20, 40 and 60 minutes at an intensity of 2.2 Gauss. The seeds were divided in three variants of 100 seeds for each time exposure and another variant of 100 seeds was used, remaining unexposed to magnetic field, representing the control variant. All seed variants exposed to magnetic field action had a decreased percentage of germinated seeds in the first day of data reading compared to control variant. But overall, at the end of germination process, the percentage of germinated seeds increased with values up to 10% at the variants under the influence of magnetic field.The research conducted in the present paper indicates that the magnetic field has a stimulative effect on germination process. The studied time intervals of exposere and 2,2 Gauss magnetic field intensity had an increasing effect on germination process.