The use of plasma‐activated water in viticulture: Induction of resistance and agronomic performance in greenhouse and open field

Abstract

In this study, two different cold atmospheric‐pressure plasmas are used for the production of plasma‐activated water (PAW). To evaluate the effectiveness of PAW as a possible means to control plant diseases, grapevines in an open field and a greenhouse are treated, evaluating qualitative and quantitative yield parameters, phytoplasma presence, and gene expression. The results show the capability of PAW to enhance plant defense mechanisms and, as demonstrated in the field trials, confirm its ability to improve the health status of the treated plants.

Helium Atmospheric Pressure Plasma Jet Source Treatment of White Grapes Juice for Winemaking

“…Our plasma source mean electrical power, around 8 W, was close to the values reported by Guo, Lukic, Nishime, Pankaj and Sarangapani (2-20 W) [26,36,[92][93][94], but lower than 20-50 W as reported by Starek, Mujahid, Wang [38,95,96], or less than 50-200 W as reported by Bao, Pan, Zhao, Xiang, Laurita, Sainz-Garcia [29,40,41,43,97,98], and even far less than 300-750 W as reported by Ashtiani, Huang, Fan, Jambrak, Zhou [30,42,44,99,100]. The higher the dissipated plasma power got, the higher the possibility of thermal treatment of the sample was.…”

“…Most of them pointed out the need to assess the barrel aging on the wine product, slowing down the fermentation process and even stopping it and green technologies for wine treatment for long term storage. Among these, plasma technologies based on gas discharges, at atmospheric pressure, are on the way to replacing old and expensive methods for fruit juice, wine and yeast treatment, the goal being the long-term storage, aging and even decontamination of such products, and seems to meet most of the criteria required by the winemakers [26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33][34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44]. Depending on the utilization, the plasma source needs be tuned as to comply with the application requirements (power, electric field, reactive species).…”

Containment of Phytoplasma-Associated Plant Diseases by Antibiotics and Other Antimicrobial Molecules

“…The qualitative and quantitative yield parameters, the phytoplasma presence, and the gene expression were evaluated. The results showed that PAW enhanced the plant defense mechanisms and, as demonstrated in the field trials, improved the health status of the treated plants [ 46 ]. In a preliminary field trial performed on 120 plants from 17 vineyards, with treatments performed in April, June, and July for three years, treated plants showed a slight reduction and a delay in the phytoplasma symptom appearance, which allowed the plants to carry their productive load ( Figure 4 ).…”

“…The quantitative yield parameters, measured after one year of treatment on 50 infected plants, confirmed a plant fitness improvement in terms of the number of grapevine clusters per plant and 100-berry weights. PAW-treated plants registered a significantly higher average number of clusters than controls, with an increased average berry weight [ 46 ]. These findings were unexpected due to the lack of positive correlation in resistance induction and plant fitness reported for other plant elicitors.…”

Plasma-Activated Saline Promotes Antibiotic Treatment of Systemic Methicillin-Resistant Staphylococcus aureus Infection

“…Plasma-activated water, as a derived form of cold atmospheric-pressure plasma, is prepared using water treated with both SDBD and APPJ plasma devices. Plasma-activated water also exhibits excellently bactericidal ability and can be injected and sprayed, which greatly expands the applications of plasma [ 36 , 37 , 38 , 39 ]. The plasma-activated water prepared by the helium or argon plasma jet for 50 min inactivated approximately 40–45% of S. aureus after incubation with bacteria suspensions for 24 h and that prepared with air plasma jet for 10 min inactivated approximately 6-log 10 S. aureus in the presence of bovine serum albumin (BSA) and more than 7-log 10 in the absence of BSA [ 40 , 41 ].…”