A Plant Growth Facility for Enhancing Interdisciplinary Plant Science Research and Training at Virginia Tech

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This award provides partial support for acquisition of 6 plant growth bays (walk-in growth chambers) and three reach-in growth chambers that will benefit ten plant science research groups. An existing bay is limited in capacity and in the quality of its environmental controls. Existing reach-in chambers are outdated and unreliable. This new plant growth facility will allow up to 6 simultaneous research projects to be independently conducted in the separate walk-in bays. A long-term management plan for the new facility has been developed, including a protocol for allocating space among researchers. Research on topics including plant-animal interactions, root foraging behavior, evolution of adaptive traits, cross-talk in the flavonoid biosynthesis pathway, and signaling processes in plant-pathogen interactions will be enabled. Moreover, the additional growth chamber space will improve the ability for research on phenotypic plasticity of adaptive traits. The new growth facilities will lift a severe constraint on the research productivity of plant scientists in the Biology Department and foster interdisciplinary research with faculty of the Virginia Bioinformatics Institute. The modernization of the plant growth facility will also enrich the education and training of students by providing increased research potential and experience with modern equipment. Increased space for our teaching collection will improve our plant-based classes and facilitate outreach activities with the broader community.