Effect of Cold Plasma Voltage and Treatment Duration on the Microstructure and Hydrophilicity of Mushroom Grain Spawn

Abstract

Nowadays, cold plasma treatment systems are widely used in many fields such as agriculture. It was proven that this technique can improve growth rate of mushroom grain spawn, but no research had been done on spawn treatment using cold plasma. Cold plasma surface treatment system was developed by using voltages of 2kV to 4 kV and treatment durations of 5s to 60 s were used. The results show an improvement of grain spawn hydrophilic properties and growth rate. The most suitable parameters to treat mushroom grain spawn were 2.5kV of voltage with treatment time of 15s resulting in increasing growth of mushroom until 5.7cm.