Plasma Agriculture

Plasma agriculture is the application of plasma technology — including non-thermal plasma and plasma-treated water — to agricultural practice. It is the application framing implied by the agriculture classification of the source dossier recorded at Plasma-Activated Water: A source Dossier (Provisional Record).

Scope

The term is used broadly to cover:

• Seed treatment — exposing seeds to plasma or plasma-treated water before sowing.
• Irrigation with treated water — applying Plasma-Activated Water (PAW) to crops or growing media.
• Crop protection — using plasma-derived reactive chemistry against pathogens on plants or in water.

The reactive chemistry underlying these uses is described on Reactive Oxygen and Nitrogen Species (RONS), and the generating discharge on Non-Thermal Plasma (Cold Atmospheric Plasma).

Evidence status

This page records the existence of the application area. It does not report trial results, crop species, dosages, or outcomes, because the source dossier that prompted this page was captured incompletely and supplies no such data. Claims of agricultural benefit found in archive material should be attributed to their source rather than treated as established findings.

A measured irrigation trial

A 2018 paper in Water Research supplies one concrete case: coral lentil seeds irrigated with tap water treated for 15 minutes by a dielectric barrier discharge germinated at the same rate as controls (99% against 97%) but were reported as 128.41% longer at day 6, with a wide spread between seedlings. The authors call it a proof of concept and could not single out which change in the water was responsible. See What Plasma Does to Tap Water: Sixteen Measured Species, a Conductivity Check and a Lentil Trial (Judée et al., 2018).

Related

• What Plasma Does to Tap Water: Sixteen Measured Species, a Conductivity Check and a Lentil Trial (Judée et al., 2018) — tap-water chemistry and a lentil seedling trial from a 2018 paper.
• The Neutralization Problem: Why Plasma-Activated Water Kill Rates May Be Overstated — a 2026 critique arguing that antibacterial figures for plasma-treated water are inflated when residual oxidants are not neutralized before counting; relevant to any crop-protection claim resting on such figures.
• Washing Produce with Plasma-Activated Water: A 2021 Review of Reported Kills, Mild-Heat Pairings and Open Gaps (Soni, Choi and Brightwell) — a 2021 review of plasma-activated water as a post-harvest wash for fruit and vegetables, with reported reductions of about 0.5 to 2.3 log and its stated limits.
• Plasma-Activated Water (PAW) — the treated water used in these applications.
• Non-Thermal Plasma (Cold Atmospheric Plasma) — the discharge technology.
• agriculture, water — broad subject guides.