Effects of acoustic waves on plants: An agricultural, ecological, molecular and biochemical perspective

One of the mechanisms is dedicated to detect sound vibrations (SV) or acoustic waves (AW). The SV has the ability of modifying the behavior of plant cells through Ca2+ and ROS cues linked to signaling process of stressed plants. These signals cause behavior changes in the cell, regulate gene expression and/or modify its biochemical activity in order to face the biotic and abiotic factors that could provoke damage in the plants. The plants face threats through the generation of compounds or substances that cause a signaling cascade and provoke a modification in its behavior. The signaling cascade caused by sound perturbations generally results in the generations of secondary metabolites that are beneficial to human health, principally, against the chronic diseases. Nowadays, reliable mechanism that could explain precisely the ability of plants to perceive, process or emit acoustic waves have not been proposed; however, there are several compounds that are generated when the plant is stressed by biotic and abiotic factors and coincide with compounds that are produced by the plants when they are under a treatment of specific SV. This allows infer that acoustic waves could serve as elicitor, sometimes, cheaper and friendlier with environment compared with the commonly used biotic or abiotic elicitors.