Development of pulsed electric fields treatment unit to treat wheat grains: Improvement of seed vigour and stress tolerance

Pulsed electric field (PEF) treatment may pose a potential to be an alternative to chemical use for seed surface disinfection and seed vigour improvement. In order to test effectiveness of PEF treatment, a new pilot-scale PEF treatment unit was designed and used to treat wheat grains with the energy range of 1.07-17.28 J. Compared to the control samples, all PEF treatments significantly increased germination and seedling rates by 10 and 28%, respectively. Electrical conductivity was significantly affected by the delayed measurement time rather than PEF treatment. PEF-treated seed samples had significantly higher tolerance to cold and salt stresses. Endogenous microflora of total aerobic mesophilic bacteria and total mold and yeast were significantly reduced by the applied energy. Salt stress on day 8 (100 mM NaCI) exhibited the highest predictive power of 98.43% in modelling studies. The multi-objective optimization of the 19 responses pointed to 161.8 Hz, 6.1 J, and 19.5 s as the optimal settings (D = 0.52). It was concluded that PEF processing of the wheat seeds improved vigor, promote cold and salt stress tolerance, and inactivated surface microflora.

Automated summary

PEF treatment significantly improved germination and seedling rates of wheat seeds, increased tolerance to cold and salt stresses, and reduced the presence of surface microflora.