Can sounds make plants grow bigger? A start-up says they can
If supported by further research, the work could expand scientists’ understanding of how plants perceive their environment and offer new ways to influence crop development. Plants can’t hear in the same way animals can, but mounting evidence suggests they can perceive and respond to vibrations in their environment. In one well-known study, researchers found that the sound of a caterpillar chewing on a leaf caused plants to produce anti-herbivore defence chemicals.
- ▪If supported by further research, the work could expand scientists’ understanding of how plants perceive their environment and offer new ways to influence crop development.
- ▪Plants can’t hear in the same way animals can, but mounting evidence suggests they can perceive and respond to vibrations in their environment.
- ▪In one well-known study, researchers found that the sound of a caterpillar chewing on a leaf caused plants to produce anti-herbivore defence chemicals.
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| Original publisher | New Scientist |
| Canonical URL | https://www.newscientist.com/article/2581022-can-sounds-make-plants-grow-bigger-a-start-up-says-they-can/?utm_campaign=RSS|NSNS&utm_content=home&utm_medium=RSS&utm_source=NSNS |
| Publication time | Thu, 23 Jul 2026 15:00:00 +0000 |
| Retrieval time | 2026-07-23T15:03:04.842Z |
| Last seen | 2026-07-23T15:03:04.842Z |
| Headline source | Publisher (no WeSearch rewrite) |
| Excerpt source | publisher body |
| Excerpt method | First ~120 words (~800 chars) of extracted publisher body, fair-use limited. |
| Summary | WeSearch · cerebras-chat (WeSearch summarizer) |
| Summary source text | contentText |
| Citation coverage | Summary is a WeSearch-generated derivative; primary citation is the original publisher URL. |
| Cluster | SORdCfiVyV3j |
| Cluster logic | Grouped by semantic title/content similarity across sources within a rolling window. Same-publisher template collisions are excluded from coverage comparison. |
| Ranking reason | Story pages are not engagement-ranked. Hub feeds use recency, with optional source-diversified chronological ordering (cap consecutive stories per source). No personalized ranking. |
| Publisher visit | Yes — open original |
| Substitutes article? | No — link-out required for full text |
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| Indexing | May the item be indexed (stored, ranked, made findable)? | Allowed |
| Snippet | May a short excerpt of the publisher's text be shown? | Allowed |
| AI summary | May WeSearch generate its own short summary of the article? | Limited |
| Retrieval / RAG | May the content be exposed for third-party retrieval-augmented generation? | Not asserted |
| Model training | May the content be used to train AI models? | Not asserted |
| Commercial reuse | May the content be reused commercially? | Not permitted |
Basis: Derived from the published RSS/Atom feed. Contact: [email protected]. Reviewed: 2026-07-24.
Opening excerpt (first ~120 words) tap to expand
Life Can sounds make plants grow bigger? A start-up says they canHaivya has developed acoustic signals designed to influence plant development, and its trials reportedly show large yield increases in soybean, pepper and cannabis crops By Vanessa Bates Ramirez 23 July 2026 Facebook Threads X / Twitter WhatsApp LinkedIn Reddit Email Print Cannabis plants produced more biomass with acoustic stimulation, according to the firm Haivyahalbergman/Getty Images A precision agriculture start-up has created specially designed sound patterns to “program” plant growth, which it claims lead to larger harvests and altered traits without any genetic engineering or chemicals.
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Excerpt limited to ~120 words for fair-use compliance. The full article is at New Scientist.
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