A fenugreek germination experiment from the SVYASA group testing the Omkara (Om/ॐ) mantra — the root bija mantra of Vedic tradition, considered the primordial sound preceding all other mantras. This is the third mantra-on-fenugreek study from the same institution and first author (Ravi Kumar), following the 2016 Maha Mrtyunjaya mantra study published in Indian Journal of Traditional Knowledge.
Protocol matches the 2016 experiment: 600 fenugreek seeds per group, five replicates of 120 seeds, mantra chanted 108 times at sunrise and sunset for two days. The primary difference is the mantra itself — Om rather than the 58-syllable Maha Mrtyunjaya mantra.
Results (from abstract): treatment seeds showed +5.5% germination rate, significantly greater radical length (“exponential significance”), +0.25g fresh weight, and +0.47g dry weight vs. control. Exact numerical radical length values are in the full PDF, which is behind a paywall.
Contextual note: The 2016 Maha Mrtyunjaya result showed +25.6% radical length (p<0.0001), with a control radical of 2.74cm and treatment of 3.45cm. If the Omkara paper’s protocol is identical, a similar order of magnitude is plausible — but the germination metric (+5.5%) is lower than the radical length effect, which is typical as germination rate approaches ceiling (the 2016 paper also showed only +1% emergence alongside +25.6% radical length).
Confidence is rated 0.2 — slightly below the 2016 companion paper — primarily because the full statistics cannot be independently verified from open sources, and because Life Sciences Leaflets is a lower-tier publication than the Scopus-indexed IJTK where the 2016 paper appeared. The pattern is consistent with the rest of the SVYASA mantra series, but unverifiable statistical depth lowers the evidential weight.
Source: Kumar IR, Karthik M. Life Sciences Leaflets 103, September 2018. https://petsd.org/ojs/index.php/lifesciencesleaflets/article/view/1344