Experimental facilities for plant growing under climatic controlled conditions

Greenhouse compartments and Growth chambers are under the responsibility of Alain Fortineau (AI). He is assisted by Fabrice Duhamel (AT) for greenhouse technical operations, experimental cultivation, and irrigation systems. A support team is on-call 24 hours a day and 7 days a week to secure the experiments and facilities, Michel Burban (TR), Christine Collin (AT), Brigitte Durand (TR) and Jean-Christophe Gueudet (AT).

Growth chamber experiments enable accurate climatic conditions ensuring great uniformity to set the physical plant growing environment. This method allows accurate and repeatable sources of variation of one variable at a time. It also requires a strict monitoring to ensure data accuracy and representativeness in a reasonable space and for long periods of time. The device consists of four 10 square meters growth chambers, each with a lighting system (7 to 10 kW) allowing 300 to 400 µmol/m²/s PAR. Each chamber is controlled for temperature (10 to 35°C +/-0.5°C) and relative humidity (ultrasonic misting system). The automated equipment, the overall supervision and the cooling system have been renovated in 2012.

Greenhouse compartments represent complementary facilities allowing higher lighting levels and larger growing area which enable pseudo plant stand growing on containers. These compartments are located on two different sites.

• EcoSys Bioclimatology plateau : four 50 square meters greenhouse compartments, one of which with a lighting system.
• Shared facilities CETIOM – BIOGER – ECOSYS : EcoSys own two compartments (55 and 84 m²). The little one is filtered to prevent infections by pathogens, and equipped with a pressurized water fogging system and high intensity ramp lighting.