Plasma Agriculture: A green technology to attain the sustainable agriculture goal

TL;DR

This paper explores the potential of non-thermal plasma technology as an environmentally friendly alternative to synthetic fertilizers, demonstrating promising laboratory results in enhancing seed germination and plant growth for sustainable agriculture.

Contribution

It introduces plasma technology as a green solution for improving crop productivity and discusses experimental evidence of plasma-activated water's positive effects on plants.

Findings

Plasma-activated water enhances seed germination.

Plasma technology promotes root and shoot growth.

Potential for sustainable agriculture applications.

Abstract

The agriculture sector has many issues such as reductions of agricultural lands, growing population, health issues arising due to the use of synthetic fertilizers and pesticides, reduction in soil health due to extreme use of synthetic chemicals during farming, etc. The quality and quantity of foods required for living things are affected by many factors like scarcity of nutrient-rich soils, lack of suitable fertilizers, harmful insects and bugs, climate change, etc. There is a requirement to supply the proper nutrients to plants/crops for obtaining a high crop yield. Synthetic chemical fertilizers provide nutrients (macro and micro) to plants for their growth and development but the excess use of them is not good for a healthy lifestyle as well as for the environment. In recent years, non-thermal plasma (NTP) is considered as an advanced green technology for enhancing productivity in agriculture sectors. In this report, we provided the details of nutrients and their functions in the growth and development of plants/crops. How plasma technology can resolve many future challenges in the agriculture sector is discussed in detail. A few experiments on seed germination and plant growth (root and shoot length) were performed in the laboratory to explore the effect of plasma-activated water on the growth and development of plants. These primary results demonstrate the great potential of plasma technology in the agriculture sector.