. Plasma activated water as disease resistance inducer in plants

Current global food sustenance by intensive agriculture is mainly based on economic crop monocultures that, however, drastically reduces the biodiversity, increasing the yield losses due to the presence of biotic and abiotic stresses. A technology based on plasma activated water (PAW), characterized by the presence in liquid of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (RONS), was tested to try to ensure yield stability also enhancing the plant resistance responses and to promote an eco-sustainable management of plant diseases. The exposure of sterile distilled water (SDW) to a cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAP) causes a reduction of pH and the production of RONS, that induce plant defense responses. The use of PAW for the treatment of infected plants is developed and applied with the design, production, optimization and characterization of different CAP sources. The use of PAW on micropropagated shoots and plants in orchards and in greenhouse cultivation systems to evaluate its effectiveness as pathogen resistance inducer was exploited.