Gallery: This High-Tech Greenhouse Tests What Crops Will Survive Climate Change
Jeremy M. Lange01whole-room
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__Glass__ | The roof has two layers, separated by an inch of argon gas to help keep the hot rooms hot and the cool rooms cool. And because perfectly clear glass creates hot spots and shadows that can interfere with experiments, a hazy coating on the interior layer diffuses the incoming rays.
Jeremy M. Lange03foodnwater
__Food and Water__ | A system of computer-controlled tubes sends precise amounts of water and nutrients to each pot. Syngenta has 13 types of fertilizers it can mix up and deliver with the fertigation system (yes, that’s what the company calls fertilizer plus irrigation) to simulate varying soil conditions.
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__Climate Control__ | Researchers can tweak humidity, oxygen, and CO2, even mimicking hour-by-hour weather patterns based on historical (or projected) data. They can also control temperatures within 2 degrees Celsius—ducts circulate the air for an ultra-uniform distribution.
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__Lighting__ | Corn requires 12 to 16 hours of daylight to grow properly, but it can’t always be summer. Thousands of wide-spectrum lights keep sunshine constant across the seasons.
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__Rooms__ | Scientists can carve an acre of floor space into as many as 76 programmable chambers. The smallest possible room is 300 square feet—perfect for testing the same crop, like a sturdy soybean, in separate rooms at higher and higher temperatures.
