Thus, it is desirable, in experimental plant biology, to contain plant subjects in controlled environments to make reproducible observations. This is known as phenotypic plasticity (e.g., ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.Ĭompeting interests: The authors have declared that no competing interests exist.ĭevelopment, physiology, and responses to stimuli in plants are strongly influenced by environmental conditions. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are creditedĭata Availability: All relevant data are within the paper and its Supporting Information files.įunding: This work was partly supported by a grant from the National Science Foundation (IOS-1121425) to FK and University of Minnesota. Received: JanuAccepted: ApPublished: May 12, 2015Ĭopyright: © 2015 Katagiri et al. PLoS ONE 10(5):Īcademic Editor: Marcel Quint, Leibniz Institute of Plant Biochemistry, GERMANY (2015) Design and Construction of an Inexpensive Homemade Plant Growth Chamber. In summary, our design of an inexpensive plant growth chamber will tremendously increase research opportunities in experimental plant biology.Ĭitation: Katagiri F, Canelon-Suarez D, Griffin K, Petersen J, Meyer RK, Siegle M, et al. Using the interaction between Arabidopsis and one of its bacterial pathogens as a test experimental system, we demonstrate that experimental results produced in our chamber were highly comparable to those obtained in a commercial growth chamber. The one-hour average relative humidity was maintained at 75%☗% with short spikes up to ☑5%. In our setting, the temperature was tightly controlled: 22.2☌☐.8☌. Temperature, relative humidity, and light cycle inside the chamber were controlled via a z-wave home automation system, which allowed the environmental parameters to be monitored and programmed through the internet. A portable air conditioner provided an ample cooling capacity, and a cooling water mister acted as a powerful humidifier. Fluorescent lights with large reflectors provided a relatively spatially uniform photosynthetically active radiation intensity of 140–250 μmoles/m 2/sec. The dimensions of the growth area and height can be flexibly changed. Our plant growth chamber had outside dimensions of 1.5 m (W) x 1.8 m (D) x 2 m (H), providing a total growth area of 4.5 m 2 with 40-cm high clearance. For a comparable growth space, a commercial plant growth chamber could cost $40,000 or more. To overcome the limitation of commercial growth chambers, we designed and constructed an inexpensive plant growth chamber with consumer products for a material cost of $2,300. The high cost of maintaining a controlled growth environment is often a limiting factor when determining experiment size and feasibility. Commercial plant growth chambers can provide precise controls of environmental parameters, such as temperature, humidity, and light cycle, and the capability via complex programming to regulate these environmental parameters. Plant growth chambers produce controlled environments, which are crucial in making reproducible observations in experimental plant biology research.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |