EXPANDING
FOR AGRICULTURAL RESEARCH
H udsonAlpha has a new building gracing its skyline — a 14,000-square-foot glass greenhouse. The highly sophisticated facility has two lab spaces, seven grow rooms with fifteen-foot ceilings, and sev- eral technologically advanced features rarely found in other greenhouses. The facility will help researchers in the HudsonAlpha Center for Plant Science and Sustainable Agriculture (Plant Center) advance their mission to use genomics to help sustainably feed and fuel our planet. The HudsonAlpha agricultural genomics program grew rapidly over the past few years. The team quickly maxed out the space in its indoor growth rooms, necessi- tating a full greenhouse. The Kathy L. Chan Greenhouse opened in August 2022 and is one of only a few of its kind in the nation. It’s unique to HudsonAlpha because it was built for the researchers who will be using it, with their input and requests influencing the design. “The features here are unique because we were given the freedom to make design decisions based on our research needs,” said Kankshita Swaminathan, PhD , HudsonAlpha Faculty Investigator. “We have everything we
dahlias
might need in the new space. We asked many collabora- tors to contribute the lessons they’ve learned from their greenhouses, and they guided us in the customization and problem-solving process.” The team is excited by the close proximity of the greenhouse to their labs and the freedom it will afford them. “With this greenhouse, the idea is any plant, any experiment, anytime,” said HudsonAlpha Faculty Inves- tigator Alex Harkess, PhD . “The close proximity of the greenhouse means if we want to do a spontaneous experiment, we can.” The Plant Center team moved into the greenhouse in August 2022, filling the rooms with their plants. Each grow room has space to grow up to 500 plants. Peanuts, sunflowers, grasses, dahlia, and members of the papaya family are happily growing in their own rooms with cus- tomized climates and lighting schedules.
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