Abstract
Two plasma devices at atmospheric pressure (air dielectric barrier discharge and helium plasma jet) have been used to study the early germination of Arabidopsis thaliana seeds during the first days. Then, plasma activated waters are used during the later stage of plant development and growth until 42 days. The effects on both testa and endospserm ruptures during the germination stage are significant in the case of air plasma due to its higher energy and efficiency of producing reactive oxygen species than the case of helium plasma. The latter has shown distinct effects only for testa rupture. Analysis of germination stimulations are based on specific stainings for reactive oxygen species production, peroxidase activity and also membrane permeability tests. Furthermore, scanning electron microscopy (SEM) has shown a smoother seed surface for air plasma treated seeds that can explain the plasma induced-germination. During the growth stage, plants were watered using 4 kinds of water (tap and deionized waters activated or not by the low temperature plasma jet). With regards to other water kinds, the characterization of the tap water has shown a larger conductivity, acidity and concentration of reactive nitrogen and oxygen species. Only the tap water activated by the plasma jet has shown a significant effect on the plant growth. This effect could be correlated to reactive nitrogen species such as nitrite/nitrate species present in plasma activated tap water.
Highlights
Introduction[1,2,3] and the references given therein)
We tested the effects of Arabidopsis thaliana germination rate of direct plasma treatment and the indirect plasma actions
Seeds treated with the air plasma had a significant increase of testa rupture and endosperm rupture 24 h and after imbibition when compared to the non-treated seeds (Fig 2)
Summary
[1,2,3] and the references given therein) Prior to these investigations in this “plasma medicine” field, there is a long list of research devoted to sterilization and decontamination of surfaces based on the bactericide properties of low temperature plasmas. Most of this literature is devoted to the inactivation of planktonic microorganisms [4, 5] and some to biofilm removal [6, 7]. There are studies in the field of plasma gene transfection which is promising for applications in regenerative medicine and/or gene therapy [10, 11]
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