The impacts of magnetic treatment of irrigation water on plant, water and soil characteristics

Magnetic treatment has remained a controversial process for antiscale treatment of industrial and domestic water treatment over the past many years. Hence a study was initiated to evaluate the magnetic treatment of irrigation water on growth and yield parameters of cow pea and brinjal using pot and field experiments. Also, the impact of magnetic treatment on water properties and soil moisture were also evaluated. Under pot experiment, the treatments tried are normal water, hard water 150 and 300 ppm, saline water 500, 1000 and 2000 ppm of both control and magnetic treated solutions, respectively. Two permanent magnets with the strength of 1800-2000 G was used. The results showed that magnetic treatment of irrigation water types led to an improvement in crop growth and yield parameters of cow pea. Magnetic treatments tend to reduce electrical conductivity, total dissolved solids and salinity levels of all solutions except normal irrigation water, whereas a definite trend of increase in pH was noticed for all the treatments. Soil moisture study results showed that the differences in soil moisture for days 1-3 after irrigation with magnetized irrigation water were lesser than those for the control solutions. Irrigation with magnetized irrigation water caused higher soil moisture compared with the control for different solution of saline and hard water respectively. In the field experiment with brinjal also the magnetic treatment of normal and saline water improved the yield by 25.8 and 17.0% over control. Scanning electron microscope image analysis results confirmed that under magnetic treated hard water, there was variation in the crystal structure of calcium carbonate. The length of these crystals is more when compared to control solutions. These results indicated the beneficial effect of magnetically treated irrigation water on growth and yield of crops, the properties of water and confirmed the possibility of using low quality water for agriculture. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.