Recently consumer demand of fresh fruits has been increased because public are more aware with their health. Fruits are often consumed raw, and that increase the chances of people being infected by pathogenic bacteria. This problem encourages the need to find new methods to maintain the quality and hygiene of fruits. Preservation methods that are often used today have many disadvantages, for example the use of temperature-based method that could possibly damage the texture and nutrient of the fruits. In this study, the use of Plasma Activated Water (PAW) on cherry tomatoes was proven to be able to maintain fruit quality for 2 days longer. This is because PAW has a higher oxidation reduction potential (ORP) compared to ordinary water. The higher the ORP is shown to have a better ability to inactivate the microorganisms attached to the fruit surface

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An attempt to enhance the germination of green bell pepper has been tried by using dry processing non thermal (cold) argon plasma treatment. As an emerging non thermal technology, cold plasma could be used to give a pretreatment to a thermal-sensitive material, such as pretreatment to seeds of bell pepper prior to be planted in soil to understand the effect of this dry process during the germination period. In this experiment, the used argon plasma was generated by flowing argon gas with the rate of 2 L/min through a positively charged of stainless pipe at a distance of 15 mm from aluminum plate electrode. With an applied voltage of 9.8 kV (peak-to-peak) electrical energy from a high voltage AC power supply, argon plasma irradiation was employed to the bell pepper seeds for a predetermined period of time as pretreatment to the seeds during pre-planting. It was found that the temperature of the plasma never exceeded 35°C during the plasma irradiation to assure that no thermal damage occurred to the seeds. It was also confirmed from this study that by giving non thermal plasma treatment for 30 minutes to the seeds may enhance the germination of the bell pepper plants up to 90% in stem length and almost 2.5 times in root length compared to the pepper without treatment.

In this paper, we report the successful development of non-thermal atmospheric plasma torch employing high voltage power supply. Usually atmospheric plasma is generated at high temperature (>1000 °C) and it is quite a challenge to generate cold plasma (<150 °C). The plasma torch in this assembly uses helium gas. The length of helium plasma glow discharge in this research is studied and optimized, with flow rate varied from 2 to 7 liters per mins, at varied applied voltage of 1.20 to 2.00 kV. The generated cold helium plasma has tunable length of around 5 to 35 mm, as cold as 26 °C. The plasma setup in this study is projected to be suitable for future applications in several fields such as industrial wastewater processing, as well as food processing, or agricultural field.