Abstract
Utilization of plasma activated water (PAW) for plant growing is mainly connected with the treatment of seeds and subsequent stimulation of their germination. A potential of PAW is its relatively simple and low-cost preparation that calls for studying its wider application in plant production. For this purpose, a pot experiment was realized in order to prove effects of the foliar PAW application on maize growth. The stepped PAW foliar application, carried out in 7-day intervals, led to provable decrease of chlorophyll contents in leaves compared to the distilled water application. The PAW application significantly increased root electrical capacitance, but it had no provable effect on weight of the aboveground biomass. Chlorophyll fluorescence parameters expressing the CO2 assimilation rate and variable fluorescence of dark-adapted leaves were provably decreased by PAW, but quantum yield of photosystem II electron transport was not influenced. A provably higher amount of nitrogen was detected in dry matter of plants treated by PAW, but contents of other macro- and micro-nutrients in the aboveground biomass of maize were not affected. Results of this pilot verification of the PAW application have shown a potential for plant growth optimization and possibility for its further utilization, especially in combination with liquid fertilizers.
Highlights
Due to the rising population on the Earth, the question of food demand provision is becoming more and more important [1]
The mean content of chlorophyll (N-tester value) in the maize leaves treated by plasma activated water (PAW) was not significantly (p ≤ 0.05) different from the values measured after the foliar treatment with DW
By the comparison of variant PAW3 to PAW1, the N-tester value was enhanced significantly (p ≤ 0.05) by 6.5%. This effect is probably related to the presence of nitrogen in the PAW that has led to the increased chlorophyll production [32,33]
Summary
Due to the rising population on the Earth, the question of food demand provision is becoming more and more important [1]. Plasma has been utilized in the industry for tens of years [3], but the contemporary interest is focused on plasma applications in biomedicine and interdisciplinary fields connecting physics and biology [4,5,6,7]. This interest of the non-thermal plasma application ( called “cold” plasma due to its real neutral gas temperature) is still increasing and simultaneously, the number of experiments with plasma utilization for the treatment of plant materials is increasing [8,9,10,11,12,13,14,15].
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