Properties of Soil Treated With Ozone Generated by Surface Discharge

Chemical contamination in plants, soil, and ground water has become serious by overuse of pesticides and nitrogen fertilizers in agriculture. We propose the use of ozone generated by atmospheric pressure plasma for soil disinfection as one of the plasma applications into agriculture. Because ozone has strong oxidation potential to decompose organic substances in soil, it is considered to be one of the candidates as potential alternative to both pesticide and nitrogen fertilizer. In this paper, fundamental studies on changes in acidity and amounts of nitrogen nutrients, bacteria, mold, and soil DNA remained in soil after ozone treatment were carried out with a system using a quartz chamber. Surface barrier discharge that operates in atmospheric oxygen was used in the system as the ozone generator. In addition, growth of radishes that seeded on soils in pots that were treated by ozone diffusion method was also evaluated.