Developing the Enviratron: A Facility for Automated Phenotyping of Plants Growing under Varied Conditions

The Enviratron is a new concept and design in plant phenotyping with the purpose of testing plant performance under different environmental conditions. In contrast to current phenotyping facilities, the Enviratron is designed to analyze plant growth and performance under up to eight different environmental conditions in one experiment. Also unlike current phenotyping facilities, plants are not conveyed to a central analyzing station, instead a mobile robotic analyzer (rover) equipped with a sensor array visits plants, minimizing disturbances in the growth environment. In analyzing the relationship between G X E (genotype by environment), most phenotyping facilities are equipped to vary G. The Enviratron’s special feature is its capacity to vary E. The Enviratron consists of eight growth chambers that each can be programmed to a unique environment that can vary slightly in a single parameter or by different climate scenarios, including temperature, CO₂, humidity, water, and light (duration and intensity). The rover’s sensor array includes a holographic camera, hyperspectral sensor, fluorescence detector, infrared detector, and Raman scattering spectrometer. Individual pots are designed to have soil water potential sensors with a watering system to maintain chosen soil water potentials. To enable downstream discovery and reuse of diverse data collected using the Enviratron system, a MIAPPE-compliant metadata collection and reporting mechanism is under development. Learn more about Enviratron online at http://enviratron.iastate.edu/.