Potential applications of non-thermal plasma in animal husbandry to improve infrastructure

Abstract

Infrastructure in animal husbandry refers to fundamental facilities and services necessary for better living conditions of animals and its economy to function through better productivity. Mainly, infrastructure can be divided into two categories: hard infrastructure and soft infrastructure. Physical infrastructure, such as buildings, roads, and water supplying systems, belongs to hard infrastructure. Soft infrastructure includes services which are required to maintain economic, health, cultural and social standards of animal husbandry. Therefore, the proper management of infrastructure in animal husbandry is necessary for animal welfare and its economy. Among various technologies to improve the quality of infrastructure, non-thermal plasma (NTP) technology is an effectively applicable technology in different stages of animal husbandry. NTP is mainly helpful in maintaining better health conditions of animals in several ways via decontamination from microorganisms present in air, water, food, instruments and surfaces of animal farming systems. Furthermore, NTP is used in the treatment of waste water, vaccine production, wound healing in animals, odor-free ventilation, and packaging of animal food or animal products. This review summarizes the recent studies of NTP which can be related to the infrastructure in animal husbandry.