Plasma seed treatment technology and seed quality enhancement: A bibliometric survey

Recently, plasma seed treatment technology (PSTT) has attracted researchers’ interests as an ecofriendly method of seed enhancement. Despite upsurge of research in this field, a comprehensive study on hotspot keywords, trends and future scientific research directions is lacking. Thus, using bibliometric methods our survey on the PSTT-related scientific literature resulted in identification of 303 published documents from 2000 to 2023 in the online Web of Science database. There has been rapid annual growth of documents on PSTT from 2013 to 2023, with the largest increases from China, Slovakia, Japan and Lithuania. The journals Plasma Chemistry and Plasma Processing , Plasma Processes and Polymers and Scientific Reports had the highest number of documents and citations. Keyword analysis showed that “growth”, “wheat”, “inactivation”, “germination”, “atmospheric pressure plasma” and “non-thermal plasma” were the most popular. Major gaps in this field were development of standardised protocols, field-scale studies, comprehensive meta-analysis studies and understanding of the biochemical/molecular basis of this technique in breaking seed dormancy and improving seed quality. To address these gaps, further collaboration of physics experts with agronomists and seed scientists is required to realise the potential practical application of this technique.