effect of corona discharge-based cold plasma on chickpea seed germination

Cold plasma has been introduced as a novel technology in the agricultural sector. this technology has the potential to be used for improving seed germination and plant growth. extensive research has been conducted on the optimization of early seed growth and cold plasma for various seeds, however, no research has been conducted in this regard on the chickpea varieties under investigation. in this study, a vacuum pump, two asymmetric plate electrodes, and a hemispherical chamber were employed to generate cold plasma using the corona discharge method. each experimental unit consisted of 25 randomly selected seeds from each of the tested varieties. chickpea seeds were exposed to cold plasma under vacuum for different time periods (0, 30, and 60 seconds). a control treatment without plasma exposure was also considered. to investigate the effect of cold plasma treatment on seeds at different plasma exposure times compared to the control sample, a factorial experiment in a completely randomized design with three replications was used. the results show that samples exposed to cold plasma have a significant difference (p