Electrical treatment methods for sunflower seed germination enrichment

Abstract

In this research, germination enhancement of sunflower seeds by electrical methods has been proposed. The influence of non-thermal plasma and electric field treatment on germination improvement of sunflower seeds was studied. For the plasma-treated cases, sunflower seeds were irradiated by argon-oxygen plasma at the gas flow rate of 5:5 liter per minute. The experiments for electric field case, sunflowers were placed in the same magnitude of electric field in the plasma-treated cases, but mixed gas was not fed to the systems. All the experiments were treated for 90 seconds at the source voltage of 9, 11, 13 and 15 kilovolts. The experimental results showed that both methods could improving the germination rate and germination percentage of sunflower seeds. In both electrical treatment methods, the germinating rate was higher than that the controlled group for 14%, approximately. However, in the case of electric field treatment, the electric arc was easy to take place at high voltage, which could damage the sunflower seeds.