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Sainsbury Laboratory

pgfThe Greenhouse

Built by Bridge Greenhouses, the Venlo style glasshouse offers a functional and practical growing space for growing plants where precise environmental requirements are not a prerequisite. The state of the art glasshouse with mobile benches, resin sealed floor, and grow lamps, and allows researchers a clean and useful growing space all year round. The facility benefits from a separate plant preparation area easily accessible to the main growing areas through a central corridor.

The Controlled Growth Facilities

Engineered and built by the Canadian company Conviron, these rooms provide researcher’s the ability to control with greater accuracy their growing environments. The Sainsbury Laboratory is equipped with three different types of CER, which allows flexibility in our research by widening the range of plants that can be grown. The majority of these rooms are housed below the greenhouses in the basement area, which also encloses the preparation area and vernalisation room.

MTPC

Often referred to as the ‘Arabidopsis Room,’ the MTPC is ideally suited for the growing of these model plants. It is a multi-tiered room that provides 18m² of growing space, with flexible moving trolleys and easily adjustable lighting for increase or decrease in µmole light requirements. The Sainsbury Laboratory has 26 of these rooms.

PGC Flex Cabinets

These reach in cabinets once again offer flexibility and are useful for growing a wide range of plants. Each cabinet has a 2m² surface area, adjustable pulley roof lights giving a maximum growth height of 1.5m, temperature control from 10°C to 40°C (lights on) and maximum light level of 700µmoles. There are 5 of these cabinets.

BDW

The high light level rooms provide the researcher the ability to grow better quality crop plants. By providing high light levels (up to 1100µmoles) and high temperatures, coupled with maintaining humidity within ample growth space, these rooms are ideal for growing cereals and other crops. The Sainsbury Laboratory has 11 of these rooms.