Director: Prof. Jaime Kigel
Tel: 08-9489321
Better understanding the effects of the environment on plant
growth is necessary
for the improvement of crop production, as well as for the optimization of
energy and manpower resources invested in agriculture. Wide-ranging research
on environmental effects on plant growth and production is an essential
part of
this process, and such research is best conducted in a Phytotron,
which is a large,
complex, controlled-environment research facility for the study of
plant
responses to climatic conditions. Thus, the Phytotron in memory of Sir
Michael
Sobell is a basic requirement for many of the research projects at the
Robert H. Smith Faculty of Agriculture, Food and Environment.
The soundest approach to the study of these environmental effects and
relationships is to compare specific aspects of growth
simultaneously, in a range
of environments that differ in only one component at a time, such as
night or day
temperature, water and mineral availability, or light intensity, while
all the
others are kept constant. A Phytotron provides an alternative, more
efficient and
versatile solution by offering an integrated system of several
interconnected
growth rooms, naturally as well as artificially illuminated, with fully
controlled
temperature, air humidity and day length, in which plants can be grown
with
different levels of mineral and water availability. As the plants are
grown in
containers kept on carts they can be moved easily from one growth room to
another. Thus, a Phytotron provides a great number and variety of climatic
conditions to which plants can be exposed, thus enabling the simultaneous
performance of factorial climatic experiments. In addition, as the growth
rooms
are large and there is a more flexible allocation of space, several
researchers can
use the growth rooms at the same time. As most plants are moved from one
room to another at least twice daily, a given unit of space can be, and
usually is
occupied at various times of the day or night by carts of plants from
different
experiments.
The growth room complex includes four glassrooms with natural
illumination and nine growth rooms that are artificially illuminated.
Each room
is maintained at a particular day length, temperature and humidity regime
that
that can be varied in daily, controlled cycles. These conditions can be
changed
according to experimental needs. Temperature and humidity sensors are
located
in each room in order to continuously monitor and automatically control
these
conditions. Modern computerized monitoring and control equipment allows the
temperature to be controlled to within 1°C, and humidity to within 3-5%.
Such
precise control is crucial if researchers are to reproduce experiments
accurately.
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