Dong Yuanhua

Effects of cold plasma treatment on seed germination and seedling growth of soybean

Effects of cold plasma treatment on soybean (Glycine max L. Merr cv. Zhongdou 40) seed germination and seedling growth were studied. Seeds were pre-treated with 0, 60, 80, 100 and 120 W of cold plasma for 15 s. Results showed that plasma treatments had positive effects on seed germination and seedling growth, and treatment of 80 W had the highest stimulatory effect. Germination and vigor indices significantly increased by 14.66% and 63.33%, respectively. Seeds water uptake improved by 14.03%, and apparent contact angle decreased by 26.19%. Characteristics of seedling growth, including shoot length, shoot dry weight, root length and root dry weight, significantly increased by 13.77%, 21.95%, 21.42% and 27.51%, respectively, compared with control. The seed reserve utilization, including weight of the mobilized seed reserve, seed reserve depletion percentage and seed reserve utilization efficiency significantly improved by cold plasma treatment. In addition, soluble sugar and protein contents were 16.51% and 25.08% higher than those of the control. Compared to a 21.95% increase in shoot weight, the root weight increased by 27.51% after treatment, indicating that plasma treatment had a greater stimulatory effect on plant roots. These results indicated that cold plasma treatment might promote the growth even yield of soybean.

Effect of Cold Plasma Treatment on Seed Germination and Growth of Wheat

This study investigated the effect of cold helium plasma treatment on seed germination, growth and yield of wheat. The effects of different power of cold plasma on the germination of treated wheat seeds were studied. We found that the treatment of 80 W could significantly improve seed germination potential (6.0%) and germination rate (6.7%) compared to the control group. Field experiments were carried out for wheat seeds treated with 80 W cold plasma. Compared with the control, plant height (20.3%), root length (9.0%) and fresh weight (21.8%) were improved significantly at seedling stage. At booting stage, plant height, root length, fresh weight, stem diameter, leaf area and leaf thickness of the treated plant were respectively increased by 21.8%, 11.0%, 7.0%, 9.0%, 13.0% and 25.5%. At the same time, the chlorophyll content (9.8%), nitrogen (10.0%) and moisture content (10.0%) were higher than those of the control, indicating that cold plasma treatment could promote the growth of wheat. The yield of treated wheat was 7.55 t ha−1, 5.89% more than that of the control. Therefore, our results show that cold plasma has important application prospects for increasing wheat yield.

Characterization of animal manures using mid-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy.

The feasibility of using Fourier transform mid-infrared photoacoustic spectroscopy (FTIR-PAS) for rapid characterization of animal manures was investigated. Animal manure samples were collected from various places in China, and probabilistic neural networks (PNN) and partial least squares (PLS) were initially applied in the qualitative and quantitative analysis of animal manures, respectively. The animal manures exhibited distinctive bands, specifically around 2900-3700 cm(-1), 1200-1800 cm(-1) and 500-1100 cm(-1). There were numerous differences in the spectra of different animal manures, and manures were successful identified by PNN model; organic matter contents in animal manure were well predicted by PLS model, and the calibration coefficient (R(2)), validation error and RPD (ratio of standard deviation to predicted error) were 0.93, 2.38% and 2.58%, respectively, suggesting the potential application of FTIR-PAS for the fast characterization of animal manures.