Journal Article

Plant Growth Environments with Programmable Relative Humidity and Homogeneous Nutrient Availability

Cademartiri, Ludovico, Ganapathysubramaniam, Baskar, Sizmur, Tom, Lind, Kara R., Van Bruggen, Shawn, Siemianowski, Oskar, Lee, Nigel

2016

Overview

We describe the design, characterization, and use of \"programmable\", sterile growth environments for individual (or small sets of) plants. The specific relative humidities and nutrient availability experienced by the plant is established (RH between 15% and 95%; nutrient concentration as desired) during the setup of the growth environment, which takes about 5 minutes and <1$ in disposable cost. These systems maintain these environmental parameters constant for at least 14 days with minimal intervention (one minute every two days). The design is composed entirely of off-the-shelf components (e.g., LEGO® bricks) and is characterized by (i) a separation of root and shoot environment (which is physiologically relevant and facilitates imposing specific conditions on the root system, e.g., darkness), (ii) the development of the root system on a flat surface, where the root enjoys constant contact with nutrient solution and air, (iii) a compatibility with root phenotyping. We demonstrate phenotyping by characterizing root systems of Brassica rapa plants growing in different relative humidities (55%, 75%, and 95%). While most phenotypes were found to be sensitive to these environmental changes, a phenotype tightly associated with root system topology-the size distribution of the areas encircled by roots-appeared to be remarkably and counterintuitively insensitive to humidity changes. These setups combine many of the advantages of hydroponics conditions (e.g., root phenotyping, complete control over nutrient composition, scalability) and soil conditions (e.g., aeration of roots, shading of roots), while being comparable in cost and setup time to Magenta® boxes.

• Publisher: Public Library of Science,Public Library of Science (PLoS)
• Subject: Aeration / Agriculture - economics / Agriculture - instrumentation / Agriculture - methods / Bioengineering / Biology and Life Sciences / Brassica / Brassica rapa / Brassica rapa - growth & development / Cost-Benefit Analysis / Darkness / Design of experiments / Earth Sciences / Environment / Environmental changes / Environmental factors / Environmental parameters / ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES / Genomes / Germination / Greenhouses / Handbooks / Humidity / Hydroponics / Hydroponics - methods / Hypotheses / Laboratories / Materials science / Mechanical engineering / Nutrient availability / Nutrient concentrations / Nutrients / Nutrients in soil / Phenotyping / Physical Sciences / Physiology / Plant growth / Plant Roots - growth & development / Plant sciences / Plant Shoots - growth & development / Relative humidity / Reproducibility of Results / Roots / Science & Technology - Other Topics / Seedlings - growth & development / Seeds - growth & development / Shading / Size distribution / Soil / Soil conditions / Soil nutrients / Topology / Trends / Water - metabolism