## 1 Introduction  
Cereals are the basis of food safety and are common food products worldwide [1, 2]. According to the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) of the United Nations, three of them, rice, maize, and wheat, provide 60% of the world's food energy intake [3]. Moreover, as stated by the FAO [4], \"Food and agriculture production systems worldwide are facing unprecedented challenges from an increasing demand for food for a growing population, rising hunger and malnutrition, adverse climate change effects, overexploitation of natural resources, loss of biodiversity, and food loss and waste....We need to expand and accelerate the transition to sustainable food and agriculture\". Therefore, a steady improvement in agricultural practices for cereal growing is a crucial task [5,6]. Electrophysical technologies are some of the most promising for the intensification of agricultural practices. High-voltage technologies are already widely used in electrostatic precipitators, for the electrosynthesis of ozone, in methods for separating materials in an electric field (ore dressing, redistribution of dumps, etc. ), and in many others [7]. At the same time, the high-voltage techniques in the field of the electrophysical preparation of seeds for sowing, despite their long development, have not yet found widespread use in industrial agriculture. Much of this is due to a lack of fundamental understanding to produce certain predictable effects. However, to date, a large amount of patent, scientific, and technical information has been accumulated on the use of electrophysical methods in the presowing preparation of seeds [8]. Moreover, electric machines intended for seed preparation are used in field work. Electrophysical methods have several advantages. First of all, they are environmentally friendly compared to the most common chemical methods. Secondly, they are technologically advanced, and there are no consumables other than electrical energy. Only a small number of operations with seeds are added. Namely, the seeds are guided through some additional unit or reactor. If a comparable yield increase is achieved, the environmental friendliness and manufacturability of the electrophysical method comes to the fore. In this work, as the object of our research, we use cereals--in particular, soft wheat. At present, chemical methods of presowing preparation are most often used to protect, sanitize, and improve the resistance of wheat plants. However, some authors indicate [9, 10, 11, 12] that promising plasma techniques will be able to replace chemical methods due to their efficiency. This would make a significant contribution to the transition to environmentally friendly farming. As a successful argument supporting this expectation, the complete suppression of seed contamination by individual pathogens after plasma treatment is ensured in [12,13]. The combined action of a fungicide and low-temperature plasma is discussed in [14]. Potentially, plasma treatment in air or gas with a high oxygen concentration carries risks similar to UV radiation processing. In the working area, ozone is intensively formed. An inevitable necessity, in this case, is the creation of protective devices in such installations for ozone decomposition. As a safer method without generating ozone, it is proposed to use a high-voltage electric field, which is also used for presowing seed preparation [15,16]. It is possible that these two methods can be combined, with an increase in efficiency, using the three-electrode surface discharge system [17], in which a constant electric field is also superimposed on the plasma volume. However, chemical treatment provides not only a decrease in seed infestation, but it also increases the stress resistance of the plant and its protection in the soil after sowing. It seems that it is impossible to completely abandon such treatment, but it may be possible to reduce the consumption of the chemical agent through a combination of chemical and plasma treatment.