Impact of high strength electromagnetic fields generated by Tesla transformer on plant cell ultrastructure

Non-thermal effects of direct electric fields and alternating electromagnetic fields (EMF) have been successfully used in a number of studies and applications in agriculture and biotechnology. Among different kinds of high strength EMF generators, the Tesla transformer (TT) is known as a widely applied, low cost, and troubleproof device, which generates EMF in the range of 2-8 MHz. Despite of a number of developed and perspective applications of high strength EMFs in agriculture and biotechnology, the EMFs generated by TT, as well as the 1-50 MHz range of high strength EMF still remain unexplored in the fields of plant physiology, ultrastructure studies and biochemistry. In this work, we have shown that TT-EMFs (4 MHz) induced fast stem and petiole bending, disappearance of cell organelles, vacuolar membranes, and increase of a non-photochemical chlorophyll fluorescence quenching in petioles. It is intriguing that such fatal effects can be evoked in plants by EMFs which are well known as harmless for man at the applied strength and frequency.