Timeline

• 1746 — Dr. Maimbray electrifies two myrtle trees in Edinburgh and reports new growth.
• c. 1747–49 — The Abbé Nollet in Paris reports faster germination in electrified seeds; others report the same.
• 1752 — Franklin shows that lightning is electrical.
• 1779 — Ingenhousz discovers the role of light in plant life.
• 1783 — Bertholon publishes De l’électricité des végétaux and describes the electro-vegetometer.
• 1780s — Ingenhousz’s controlled trials find no effect; interest fades.
• 1844 — Forster’s barley plot in Scotland; Ross’s earth battery in New York.
• 1845 — Mass trials in Britain fail to reproduce Forster’s result.
• 1870s — Grandeau’s cage experiments at Nancy.
• 1885 — Lemström begins overhead-discharge trials in Finland.
• 1904 — Lemström’s Electricity in Agriculture and Horticulture published in English.
• 1906 — Lodge and Newman begin large-scale trials near Evesham.
• 1909–13 — Haber–Bosch ammonia synthesis demonstrated and industrialized.
• 1914 — Jørgensen and Priestley show that the discharge drifts onto control plots.
• 1917 — Blackman begins field trials.
• 1918 — British Electro-Culture Committee appointed.
• 1923–24 — Blackman publishes laboratory and field results: 14 of 18 field trials positive, mean gain about 22 percent.
• 1920s — Christofleau markets his apparatus; Lakhovsky reports his geranium experiment.
• 1926 — USDA Bulletin 1379 reports no effect.
• 1936 — Electro-Culture Committee disbanded; final report issued early 1937.
• 1960s — Murr documents leaf damage at high field strengths; Krueger studies air ions.
• 1990 — Chinese government begins funding greenhouse trials.
• 2018 — China reports results from 3,600 hectares of electrified greenhouses.
• 2022 — Nature Food publishes the wind-and-rain-powered pea study.
• 2023 — Linköping University’s eSoil study published in PNAS.
• 2020s — Passive copper-coil electroculture spreads through social media.