Effect of Plasma-Activated Water Generated Using Plasma Jet on Tomato (Solanum lycopersicum L. var. cerasiforme) Seedling Growth

Abstract

Seed survival and growth rate are major challenges in nursery farming. This paper proposes the widely applied plasma technology as a feasible solution. We investigated the effects of a mixed Ar–1% N2 plasma jet on tomato seed growth in plasma-activated water (PAW) containing NO3−, NO2−, and H2O2 ions. The optimal settings for the power, discharge duration, and gas flow rate of the plasma jet system were determined within the ranges of 10–20 min, 10–20 W, and 2–4 l/min, respectively. A full factorial design with center points and blocking was used. The optimal conditions to optimize the tomato weight were 20 W, 10 min, and 4 l/min, according to the empirical results and statistical analysis. The optimal PAW solution was used to treat the tomato seeds with our plasma jet system, and a 40.50% weight increase in the yield was obtained from three replications. These results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed system for fuel seed and plant growth in agricultural farming, indicating the potential of a scaled plasma jet technique for industrial use.