Acquisition of Growth Chambers for the National Phytotron

杜克大学申请70万美元用于增加18个新的受控环境（CE）室，以增强国家植物加速器的能力。Phytotron是由美国国家科学基金会资助的国家研究设施，成立于1968年，由40个人工照明的CE生长室和6个温室组成，为环境植物生物学的高级研究提供了超过477平方米的受控环境空间。这些CE单元被用来重现不同类型的环境——从北极到沙漠再到热带。这使得研究人员能够精确地控制环境条件，例如空气温度、辐照度、二氧化碳、相对湿度和营养物质浓度，从而提供了一个机会来增加对植物与其环境之间复杂相互作用的了解，这在自然的、不受控制的野外条件下几乎是不可能做到的。每年平均有17名学生、4名博士后科学家和20名资深科学家，其中73%是校外用户。Phytotron目前的CE生长箱已经连续运行了25年。虽然有些已经升级，但其有限的模拟控制不足以精确和灵活地控制多种环境变量，例如温度，光线和湿度。此外，这些老旧的实验室缺乏复杂的基于计算机的监测能力，从而限制了研究人员监测实验和重现短期可变环境条件的能力，而这些条件对于理解碳分配、光合作用和适应等过程至关重要。在过去的十年中，研究人员在Phytotron中最常操纵的环境因素是二氧化碳和温度的影响，其他因素包括干旱胁迫、养分有效性、光周期、UV-B辐射和盐度。凭借卓越的照明、数字控制和实时监控，18个新的受控环境室将提供一系列项目所需的灵活、质量控制的环境，包括分子、全植物（包括诸如叶片生理学和生长动力学等领域）、生物相互作用（例如植物-植物、植物-动物相互作用和病原体）、种群遗传学和生态系统微观世界。获得这18个最先进的实验室将对美国的生态研究产生直接和实质性的影响，特别是对全球变化对植物和生态系统的影响的研究，跨生物组织水平扩展过程的努力，以及碳固定、分配和呼吸的基本分子和生理研究。该仪器将建立并加强美国国家科学基金会在生态研究方面的投资，使国家植物实验室能够满足国家在生物科学方面的需求，包括研究生和研究生教育，并保持其在美国生态学控制环境研究方面最重要的中心之一的地位。

ABSTRACT Duke University requests $700,000 to enhance capabilities of the National Phytotron by the addition of 18 new controlled environment (CE) chambers. The Phytotron, an NSF-funded national research facility established in 1968, consists of 40 artificially lighted CE growth chambers and 6 glasshouses that provide more that 477 m2 of controlled environmental space for advanced research in environmental plant biology. These CE units are used to reproduce different types of environments -- ranging from the arctic to the desert to the tropics. This allows researchers to have precise control over environmental conditions, e.g., air temperature, irradiance, carbon dioxide, relative humidity, and nutrient concentration, thereby providing an opportunity to gain increased understanding of the complex interactions between plants and their environment, which is virtually impossible to do under natural, uncontrolled field conditions. The Phytotron hosts, on yearly average, 17 students, 4 postdoctoral scientists, and 20 senior scientists, 73% of whom are off - campus users. The Phytotron's current CE growth chambers have operated continuously for 25 years. While some have been upgraded, their limited analog controls are not adequate for precise and flexible control of multiple environments variables, e.g., temperature, light, and humidity. In addition, these older chambers lack sophisticated computer-based monitoring capabilities, thus limiting researchers' abilities to monitor experiments and to reproduce short-term, variable environmental conditions, which are critical to understanding processes like carbon allocation, photosynthesis, and acclimation. Over the past decade, the environmental factors that researchers have most frequently manipulated in the Phytotron are the effects of carbon dioxide and temperature -- other factors include drought stress, nutrient availability, photoperiod, UV-B radiation, and salinity. With Excelle nt lighting, digital controls, and real time monitoring, the 18 new controlled environment chambers will provide the flexible, quality-controlled environment needed by a range of projects, including molecular, whole-plant (including such as areas as leaf physiology and growth dynamics), biotic interactions (e.g., plant-plant and plant-animal interactions and pathogens), population genetics, and ecosystem microcosms. Acquisition of these 18 state-of-the-art chambers will have an immediate and substantial impact on U.S. ecological research, particularly studies on the effects of global change on plants and ecosystems, efforts to scale processes across biological levels of organization, and basic molecular and physiological studies of carbon fixation, allocation, and respiration. This instrumentation will build upon and enhance NSF's investment in ecological research and allow the National Phytotron to address national needs in the biological sciences, including graduate and postgraduate education, and to remain one of the most important centers for controlled environment research in ecology in the United States.