Magnetized water improves stomatal conductance and water use efficiency in irrigated crops.
Plants irrigated with magnetized water show improved stomatal conductance and water use efficiency, meaning they produce more biomass per unit of water consumed. Cowpea showed +22% in both stomatal conductance and WUE, and celery showed +12% water productivity — gains that persist across water types.
Magnetized water (MW) irrigation improves both stomatal function and the ratio of biomass produced per unit of water consumed — a critical metric in water-limited agriculture. In cowpea irrigated weekly with MW via a cylindrical magnetic device, stomatal conductance increased 22% and water use efficiency increased 22%, while total plant biomass grew substantially (leaves +22%, stems +19%, roots +47%) without any increase in total water use (Sadeghipour & Aghaei 2013). Celery irrigated with magnetized recycled or saline water showed 12% greater water productivity (kg of shoots per kL of water used) compared to unmagnetized equivalents (Maheshwari & Grewal 2009).
The mechanism is likely physical: magnetized water’s reduced surface tension and altered hydrogen-bond clustering allow better soil penetration and more efficient uptake at the root surface, delivering the same nutritive load with less water volume. The decrease in shoot:root ratio observed in cowpea (−14%) under MW suggests enhanced root development, which would further improve the plant’s ability to extract water and nutrients under stress conditions. This makes MW a potentially valuable tool in water-limited growing environments.
A 2016 two-season Egyptian field trial (Hozayn et al.) on canola quantifies the WUE gain at field scale: magnetized water increased WUE for seed production by 38.70% (from 16.63 to 23.07 kg seed/m³) and WUE for oil by 58.51% (from 4.66 to 7.38 kg oil/m³), both p<0.001. The larger WUE gain for oil than for seed reflects both the seed yield increase and an improvement in oil content percentage — a compounding effect particularly relevant for oilseed crops in arid environments.
Source: Teixeira da Silva & Dobránszki, Environmental and Experimental Biology (2014) 12: 137–142 — reviewing Sadeghipour & Aghaei 2013; Maheshwari & Grewal 2009. Additional source: Hozayn M et al. African Journal of Agricultural Research 2016; 11(5): 441-449, DOI: 10.5897/AJAR2015.9382.