Manual on Cold Plasma Treatment of Seed

Improving the performance of seed over its inherent capacity is one of the major areas of research in seed science and technology. There are numerous post-harvest seed enhancement techniques employed to enhance seed quality. Cold plasma treatment is one such recent technique. There are different ways to generate plasma viz., glow discharge, dielectric barrier discharge from various gasses like air, O2. On exposure of seed to the plasma so generated, the plasma interacts with the seed surface altering the seed surface topography and biochemical and physical properties. These alterations, in general change the behaviour of seed during the initial phase of the germination resulting in remarkable changes in the performance of seed and crop in later stages. This manual, thus, focuses on the effect of low-temperature plasma treatment and priming on germination of bell pepper seeds. Plasma treatment was combined with priming to investigate and study their individual as well as combined effects on the seed quality and storage of bell pepper.