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Since the earliest agricultural attempts, humankind has been trying to improve crop quality and yields, as well as protect them from adverse conditions. Strategies to meet these goals include breeding, the use of fertilisers, and the genetic manipulation of crops, but also an interesting phenomenon called priming or adaptive response. Priming is based on an application of mild stress to prime a plant for another, mostly stronger stress. There are many priming techniques, such as osmopriming, halopriming, or using physical agents. Non-thermal plasma (NTP) represents a physical agent that contains a mixture of charged, neutral, and radical (mostly reactive oxygen and nitrogen species) particles, and can cause oxidative stress or even the death of cells or organisms upon interaction. However, under certain conditions, NTP can have the opposite effect, which has been previously documented for many plant species. Seed surface sterilization and growth enhancement are the most-reported positive effects of NTP on plants. Moreover, some studies suggest the role of NTP as a promising priming agent. This review deals with the effects of NTP treatment on plants from interaction with seed and cell surface, influence on cellular molecular processes, up to the adaptive response caused by NTP.

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The effects of plasma‐activated water (PAW) generated by nonthermal air plasmas of transient spark with water electrospray or atmospheric glow discharge were investigated on maize (Zea mays L. var Saccharata) and barley (Hordeum vulgare L.) seedlings. PAW is characterized by measuring concentrations of reactive oxygen and nitrogen species (H2O2, , ). After 4 weeks of plants growth, the effects of PAW are analyzed by measuring plant growth and physiological parameters: plant length and fresh weight, photosynthetic pigments concentration and photosynthesis rate, total soluble proteins, antioxidant enzyme activity, and DNA damage. The results suggest that PAW, depending on chemical composition, has the potential to improve the plant growth and influence the physiological parameters, while causing no harmful DNA damage.

Climate change, environmental pollution and pathogen resistance to available chemical agents are part of the problems that the food industry has to face in order to ensure healthy food for people and livestock. One of the promising solutions to these problems is the use of cold atmospheric pressure plasma (CAPP). Plasma is suitable for efficient surface decontamination of seeds and food products, germination enhancement and obtaining higher yields in agricultural production. However, the plasma effects vary due to plasma source, treatment conditions and seed type. In our study, we tried to find the proper conditions for treatment of barley grains by diffuse coplanar surface barrier discharge, in which positive effects of CAPP, such as enhanced germination or decontamination effects, would be maximized and harmful effects, such as oxidation and genotoxic potential, minimized. Besides germination parameters, we evaluated DNA damage and activities of various germination and antioxidant enzymes in barley seedlings. Plasma exposure resulted in changes in germination parameters and enzyme activities. Longer exposures had also genotoxic effects. As such, our findings indicate that appropriate plasma exposure conditions need to be carefully optimized in order to preserve germination, oxidation balance and genome stability, should CAPP be used in agricultural practice.

Hyperforin (HF), a substance that accumulates in the leaves and flowers of Hypericum perforatum L. (St. John’s wort), consists of a phloroglucinol skeleton with lipophilic isoprene chains. HF exhibits several medicinal properties and is mainly used as an antidepressant. So far, the antigenotoxicity of HF has not been investigated at the level of primary genetic damage, gene mutations, and chromosome aberrations, simultaneously. The present work is designed to investigate the potential antigenotoxic effects of HF using three different experimental test systems. The antigenotoxic effect of HF leading to the decrease of primary/transient promutagenic genetic changes was detected by the alkaline comet assay on human lymphocytes. The HF antimutagenic effect leading to the reduction of gene mutations was assessed using the Ames test on the standard Salmonella typhimurium (TA97, TA98, and TA100) bacterial strains, and the anticlastogenic effect of HF leading to the reduction of chromosome aberrations was evaluated by the in vitro mammalian chromosome aberration test on the human tumor cell line HepG2 and the non-carcinogenic cell line VH10. Our findings provided evidence that HF showed antigenotoxic effects towards oxidative mutagen zeocin in the comet assay and diagnostic mutagen (4-nitroquinoline-1-oxide) in the Ames test. Moreover, HF exhibited an anticlastogenic effect towards benzo(a)pyrene and cisplatin in the chromosome aberration test.

Abstract. The study was designed to test the potential photogenotoxicity of hypericin (HYP) at three different levels: primary DNA damages, gene mutations and chromosome aberrations. Primary genetic changes were detected using the comet assay. The potential mutagenic activity of HYP was assessed using the Ames/Salmonella typhimurium assay. Finally, the ability of photoactivated HYP to induce chromosome aberrations was evaluated by the in vitro mammalian chromosome aberration test and compared to that of non-photoactivated HYP. The results have shown that photoactivated HYP can only induce primary DNA damages (single-strand DNA breaks), acting in a dose-response manner. This activity depended both on HYP concentrations and an intensity of the light energy needed for its photoactivation. However, mutagenic effect of photoactivated HYP evaluated in the Ames assay using three bacterial strains S. typhimurium (TA97, TA98 and TA100) was not confirmed. Moreover, photoactivated HYP in the range of concentrations (0.005-0.01 µg/ml) was not found to be clastogenic against HepG2 cells. Our findings from both the Ames assay and the chromosome aberrations test provide evidence that photoactivated HYP is not genotoxic, which might be of great importance mainly in terms of its use in the photodynamic therapy.