Plant Growth Rooms

Crop research / agronomy

NIAB

General description

Growth rooms are available for experiments to assess plant growth at controlled light, temperature and humidity levels. Such chambers might be used to identify optimum growth conditions for plants, or to identify the full growth or yield potential of a crop plant by providing optimum growing conditions over an extended period of weeks or months. One chamber can be run at lower temperatures offering the opportunity to conduct vernalisation work. It could be used to investigate optimum temperatures for long term storage of plants, or for calculating the chilling requirement of dormant plant material.

Technical description

Seven independently-controlled environmental growth rooms, from 10m2 to 20m2 in area. Temperature can be controlled from 15oC to 38oC and high-tech humidity control is available to create uniform environments. One vernalisation chamber can be controlled from 4oC to 21oC. The growth rooms are suitable for plant health containment work. Broad-spectrum LED plant growth lighting (500-800 µmols/m2/s) allows for deep light penetration in dense crops.

Use: Trial space (e.g. glasshouse compartment)

Location: ME19 6BJ