Effect of dormancy state of lettuce seeds on germination response against plasma irradiation

Plasma irradiation to seeds has garnered recent attention as an innovative method for enhancing agricultural productivity [1]. Seeds produce endogenous ROS during storage after seed harvesting, inducing the alteration of their dormancy state. In this study, we provide new perspectives into the effects of plasma irradiation, particularly their dependence on changes in the seed's dormancy state [2]. Lettuce seeds were used in this experiment due to the dormancy state changes over a short period of time. A scalable dielectric barrier discharge (SDBD) electrode was employed to irradiate the seed with plasma. To thoroughly investigate the impact of plasma irradiation on germination over time, we utilized a heatmap approach. The analysis demonstrated that the most pronounced positive impact of plasma irradiation on seed germination percentage (a hot spot) occurs on day 39 with a 1-minute treatment duration. Extending the duration of plasma irradiation beyond 1 minute does not seem to affect the germination percentage obviously. Therefore, we infer that the dormancy state of seeds is an important parameter impacting the effects of seed irradiation with plasma. We will discuss more details about this experiment in my presentation.