Phytotoxicity Assessment of Solanum lycopersicum L. Seedlings Moderately Irrigated with Non-Thermal Plasma Treated Water Containing Sulfamethoxazole

Contamination of agricultural ecosystems with antibiotics including sulfamethoxazole (SMX) can create favorable conditions to increase bacterial abundance in soil with antibiotic-resistant genes and can also affect plants. The aim of this research was to assess the phytotoxicity of tomato after irrigation with SMX degraded in 20 min using the non-thermal plasma-ozonation technique (T20). To achieve this, two experiments were performed at the scales of Petri dishes and pots using Solanum lycopersicum L. species, cultivar Zaraza, subjected to irrigation treatments that were compared to a distilled water control. In plates, T20 solution improved root length and also seedling vigor indexes, but the germination index, germination speed, and biomass were slightly decreased. In soil, although T20 reduced the seedling root length, their growth was not inhibited (15.3%), while in plates they exhibited a growth promotion effect with 90% more than the control. The physical–chemical and geochemical variables measured in the soil were suitable for crop characteristics and plant growth and showed statistically significant variations after harvesting. In T20-treated shoots, compared to SMX, better results were obtained for their length, assimilatory pigments, and biomass, thus selectively reducing the tomato seedling phytotoxicity depending on the endpoints, type of control, and growth methods tested.