Cold Plasma as an Innovative Seed Priming Method Enhances Seedling Growth and Salinity Tolerance in Yellow Maize

From the screen-house experiment, it could be concluded that application of plasma as seed pretreatment for 2.0 min showed significant (p < 0.05) improvements in the two hybrids of yellow maize seedling growth expressed in enhancing leaf chlorophyll content seedling length, and seedling fresh weight. Moreover, the open field experiment revealed the potential of plasma to enhance crop traits in normal and moderately soil salinity, while no significant effect was obtained in highly soil salinity. Under moderately soil salinity, plasma exposure duration for 2.0 min outperformed the check treatment (0.0 min) in ear weight and grain yield, showing increases of 42.2 and 42.1% in hybrid SC168 as well as 89.0 and 92.3% in hybrid TC368, respectively. Furthermore, N, K, Fe and Mn uptakes (in hybrid SC168 grains) as well as N, P, K, Zn and Mn uptakes (in hybrid TC368 grains) with plasma exposure duration of 2.0 min were significantly higher than those of corresponding check treatment (0.0 min) under moderately salt-affect soil.