What if the next revolution in sustainable farming could be sparked by just air and electricity?
At the University of Minnesota Twin Cities, Professor George Annor is leading research into cold plasma technology — a novel approach that has the potential to help farmers confront rising costs, reduce the need for synthetic fertilizer, naturally manage pests and significantly increase crop yields.
Produced by applying electrical energy to a gas, cold plasma may offer a variety of benefits to agriculture. These potential benefits are already being demonstrated in the lab: cold plasma can increase soybean germination rates by 30%, as shown in research collaborations with Cornell University and the University of California Davis.
“By using cold plasma to clean the surfaces of the seeds, you increase what we call the ‘wettability’ of the surface, which means that the surface readily accepts water,” says Annor, a McKnight Presidential Fellow who holds the General Mills Endowed Professorship in Cereal Chemistry and Technology in the University of Minnesota’s College of Food, Agricultural and Natural Resource Sciences. “That speeds up the penetration of water into the seed — and if the seed senses water, it will initiate germination.”
A whole crop of benefits
Using cold plasma technology for seed germination is only the beginning when it comes to its potential agricultural applications. Plasma-activated water has a variety of practical uses for farmers.
Source : umn.edu