Investigation of germination characteristics of oilseed rape in response to drought stress due to indirect treatment with low pressure cold plasma

Cold atmospheric plasma technology has found wide applications in agriculture as a suitable alternative to traditional and environmentally friendly methods. In this research, the effect of RF plasma treatment on the germination characteristics of oilseed rape in response to drought stress has been investigated. This study was conducted as a factorial experiment based on completely randomized design in 1401. The plasma factor in seven levels (P1, P2, P3, P4, P5, P6 and P7) and the drought stress factor in three levels were -0.3, -0.5 and -0.9 MPa. The results showed that the drought stress levels of -0.5 and -0.9 MPa caused a significant decrease of 50.16 and 61.92% of root length, 8.42 and 71.57% of shoot length, 21.79 and 85.46% of root dry weight, 4.87% and 39.08% of stem dry weight, 16% and 24% of germination percentage compared to drought level -0.3 MPa. In this experiment, the longitudinal growth of the stem compared to the longitudinal growth of the root was more affected by severe drought. Therefore, it can be a suitable feature to evaluate tolerance to drought stress. Exposure of canola seeds to plasma treatments of 200 W for nine minutes showed the most stimulating effect regarding the percentage of germination and seedling growth in canola.