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

这项奖励为购买6个植物生长室(步入式生长室)和3个伸缩式生长室提供部分支持，这些生长室将使10个植物科学研究小组受益。现有的海湾在容量和环境控制质量方面都是有限的。现有的触发室既过时又不可靠。这个新的植物生长设施将允许最多6个同时进行的研究项目在单独的步入式海湾独立进行。新设施的长期管理计划已经制定，包括在研究人员之间分配空间的协议。包括植物与动物的相互作用、根的觅食行为、适应性特征的进化、类黄酮生物合成途径中的串扰以及植物与病原体相互作用中的信号过程等主题的研究将成为可能。此外，额外的生长室空间将提高适应性性状表型可塑性的研究能力。新的生长设施将解除生物系植物科学家研究生产力的严重限制，并促进与弗吉尼亚生物信息学研究所的教职员工进行跨学科研究。植物生长设施的现代化还将通过提供更多的研究潜力和使用现代设备的经验来丰富对学生的教育和培训。为我们的教学收集增加空间将改善我们的植物类，并促进与更广泛的社区的外展活动。

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 Existing reach-in chambers are outdated and unreliable.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.