https://doi.org/10.1140/epjd/s10053-023-00633-5
Regular Article – Plasma Physics
Effects of cold plasma treatment on growth enhancement and on the chemical composition of sweet basil plants (Ocimum basilicum)
1
Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Avenue, 07079, South Orange, NJ, USA
2
Center for Applied Catalysis and Green Chemistry, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Avenue, 07079, South Orange, NJ, USA
3
Laboratory of Electrophysics and Atmospheric Plasmas (LEAP), Department of Physics, Seton Hall University, 400 South Orange Avenue, 07079, South Orange, NJ, USA
Received:
18
October
2022
Accepted:
12
March
2023
Published online:
17
April
2023
The current report is a continuation of our ongoing studies on the effect of cold plasma treatment on the physical and the biochemical properties of the Ocimum basilicum (sweet basil). Our previous work in this area revealed an enhanced growth effect by plasma treatment as well as higher levels of antioxidant components present in the essential oil extracts recovered from the plasma-treated plants. In the present study, the sweet basil was grown from seeds under controlled conditions with the plants separated into four groups. The first Group A (GA) is a control group where no plasma treatment was applied. In the second Group B (GB), the cold plasma treatment was applied to the seeds only. For Group C (GC-1X) and Group D (GD-2X), in addition to the seed treatment, the growing plants in these two groups received an additional body treatment, which was applied once (for Group C) and twice (for Group D) (weekly), following a standard treatment protocol. The total growing period was 14 weeks at which point the plants were harvested. Results revealed that the plants treated with plasma showed increased growth in their leaves and stems particularly in the later stages of vegetation. The essential oils from the sweet basil were recovered by Soxhlet extraction, and their composition was analyzed quantitatively by GC-FID and GC–MS. The extracts of the essential oil both in the control and plasma-treated plant groups showed five major components: eucalyptol, linalool, estragole, eugenol, and methyl cinnamate. Estragole was found to be in the highest concentration in the leaves, while linalool was the dominant product in the flowers, followed by estragole, eugenol, eucalyptol, and methyl cinnamate. In general, plasma treatment resulted in a significant increase in the concentration of both the estragole and linalool in the leaves, while lower concentrations of these two components were registered in the flowers for the plasma-treated groups.
Electron-Driven Processes from Single Collisions to High-Pressure Plasmas.
Guest editors: Jose L. Lopez, Michael Brunger, Holger Kersten.
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© The Author(s), under exclusive licence to EDP Sciences, SIF and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2023. Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
