Climate Chamber Greenhouse

The availability of controlled cultivation conditions is a common necessity for all working groups dealing with crops. Plants are tied to a particular location in their way of life and must therefore flexibly adapt to changing environmental conditions during their life cycle.

This plasticity of their development allows plants to make optimum use of spatially and temporally limited resources. It is not possible to fully control the cultivation conditions in the greenhouse. For instance, the length of day, daytime temperature and humidity vary throughout the year. In order to understand the molecular and physiological mechanisms underlying the development and yield formation of crop plants, it is important to minimize environmental fluctuations in light intensity and duration, temperature and humidity during the entire life cycle of the plants by cultivating them in climate chambers in which these parameters can be stringently controlled.

A further advantage of climate chambers is that they are the only way to reproducibly simulate extreme environmental conditions, such as aridity. In addition, the use of identical climate chambers allows research on plants artificially infected with pathogens or pests.

The climate chamber greenhouse is currently under construction and is expected to be ready for use in spring 2024.