At the Plant Growth & Phenotyping Facility there are eight greenhouse bays, each measuring 240 square ft, and four larger rooms of 480 square ft each. An Argus advanced system (Argus Controlled System Limited, British Columbia, Canada) allows for tight environmental controls for temperature (in within ± 2°C), relative humidity, irrigation, CO2, and lighting. The system allows setting, monitoring, recording, and downloading data from all the HVAC cooling units, heating, shading, and misting systems, fully remotely and at the preferred time rates. All rooms are deployed with a four channel Heliospectra growth light system (Heliospectra AB, Gothenburg, Sweden). By using advanced control strategies such as energy balance and “feed-forward” control intelligence, the Argus Titan system anticipates and responds to rapidly changing climate conditions before negative deviations occur. The integrated control has the advantage of having an increased precision in monitoring, and smoother, more uniform, growing conditions for better plant growth.
For more information about Argus Titan 2 System, please go to our Argus Titan 2 System page. For more information about Helioscopa Growth Lights, please visit our Heliospectra Lighting System page.
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Environmental controls, lighting, irrigation, and the quality of the benches and the deployed equipment are equal for all twelve bays but size, orientation, and proximity to the wall of the building create slight variations in the possible environmental envelope achievable during different times of the year. The Facility Manager advises on the best room choice based on the experimental requirements for the users, seasonality, and the different species to be grown.
There are 8 small greenhouse bays – Research Room 1, 2, 4, 5, 9, 10, 11, and 12. The total footage for each room is ~280 square ft, with over 200 square ft of usable space for planting.
