# The Application of Cold Atmospheric Plasma (CAP) in Barley Processing as an Environmentally Friendly Alternative

## TL;DR

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a sustainable technology for barley processing that can improve food safety and reduce environmental impact.

## Contribution

This paper reviews CAP's potential in barley processing as an eco-friendly alternative, highlighting its benefits and current technical limitations.

## Key findings

- CAP can extend shelf life and ensure food safety by combating pests and pathogens.
- CAP improves seed germination and plant growth, even under stress conditions.
- CAP is energy-efficient and does not require water or chemicals, making it sustainable.

## Abstract

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) is a novel and versatile technology, which is not yet used in the food and agricultural sector for barley processing. In lab-scale applications, the technology shows potential in extending shelf life and ensuring food safety and quality, e.g., during storage. CAP reactive nature counteracts insect pests, fungi, and bacteria, but also improves seed germination and facilitates plant growth not only under stress conditions. Its generation does not require water, chemicals, or solvents and consumes little energy due to low operating temperatures (<60 °C) with a short time span that makes additional production steps (e.g., cooling) obsolete. Therefore, CAP is a sustainable technology capable of further optimising the use of limited resources with the potential of offering solutions for upcoming environmental challenges and political requirements for replacing existing practices and technologies due to the growing impact of climate change. This review summarises recent developments and findings concerning CAP application in barley production and processing with air as the process gas. Furthermore, this comprehensive overview could help identify further research needs to overcome its current technical limitations, e.g., efficiency, capacity, etc., that hamper the upscale and market introduction of this environmentally friendly technology.