In the summer of 2004, after seeing some of the above science, she applied aspirin to vegetable plants tomatoes, cucumbers, beans and basil. Her work is routinely used in social media to validate the use of aspirin on plants. I mentioned Martha McBurney, a Master Gardener at Rhode island University. It is quite possible that the SA produced from aspirin will have a similar effect on plants as pure SA, but none of the scientific work tested aspirin. When it is dissolves in water it produces salicylic acid and acetic acid. The active ingredient in aspirin is acetylsalicylic acid. Aspirin vs Salicylic Acid (SA)Ī lot of people assume these are the same, but they’re not. To paraphrase this, SA has a short life in plants and it can be toxic, which makes it impracticable to use. However, rapid glycosylation of SA and its phytotoxicity has prevented the efficiency of SA as a plant protection chemical”. “The activation of SAR provides a broad-spectrum resistance against a wide range of related or unrelated pathogens.”Ī summery of the science on this subject, dated 2019, had the following to say, ” Exogenous application (ie spraying) of SA are reported to activate the defense responses including SAR. SA does not fight infection directly, but it triggers plants to fight the infection. Some of this SA is transported to uninfected parts of the plant, where it turns on the plant’s defenses. When a pathogen infects a plant, SA is produced by the plant at the infection site. This work was all lab work.Īnother study found that both acetylsalicylic acid (Aspirin) and salicylic acid induced stress tolerance to heat, chilling and drought in bean and tomato plants, by either soaking seeds or as a soil drench.įoliar application of SA in greenhouse experiments showed better growth and fruit development.įast forward a few years and SAR (systemic acquired resistance) is better understood. They suggested that “the treatment triggering systemic acquired resistance (SAR), a kind of general readiness state that primes plant defenses against pending microbial or insect attack”. Department of Agriculture found that spraying tomato seedlings with salicylic acid, before they were exposed to a phytoplasma, reduced the incidence of disease from 94% to 47%. It should be noted here that this worked looked at natural salicylic acid levels in plants – plants were not sprayed. Similar results were found in cucumber plants. Early work on tobacco plants showed that higher levels of salicylic acid helped plants fend off diseases, including mosaic virus. The science did not really look at Aspirin they studied the role of salicylic acid (SA). I have followed up on many of these links and I think I’ve tracked down the series of events that has led to this popular internet solution of using aspirin. Occasionally you will see mention of work done by Martha McBurney, a Master Gardener at Rhode island University, but no real data is presented. Reading these posts you quickly realize that almost none of them reference any kind of scientific study to support their claim.
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