Module 4 – High-Throughput Phenotyping Climate Chambers
This module has been built inside a dedicated building at the Wageningen Campus. It has five growth chambers, three of ca. 20 m2 and two of ca. 15 m2. Each growth chamber accommodates between 300 and 2200 plants that can be phenotyped using a range of state-of-the-art technologies. This provides the capacity to record parameters describing plant status, growth and performance under a large range of environmental conditions, that can be homogeneously controlled. In the five growth rooms LED lighting for plant growth allows researchers to vary aspects of light quality and quantity including natural daylight simulations, with features such as dusk and dawn, and with light intensities up to 2000 μmol m-2 s-1. Plant growth temperatures are -4 to +42 °C, relative humidity is adjustable from 40 to 85 %, and CO2 can be added to produce higher than ambient concentrations.
This module is for instance used for research into accelerating photosynthesis (the conversion of sunlight into growth) in the model organism Arabidopsis. The research to date has revealed, among other things, that specific genes can be linked to the efficiency of photosynthesis. The climate cells can also be used to study the reactions of the root systems of crops such as tomato and potato to salinisation. This module is located at the Wageningen Campus.

Contact

Lucas Schmitz
Operational team
Jannick Verstegen
Jonathan Hovenkamp
Mark Aarts
Rick van de Zedde