Warwick opens new £5 million Phytobiology facility

Warwick University’s latest state-of-the-art Phytobiology facility opened on main campus earlier this month.

The Phytobiology Facility represents a £5 million investment from the University into food security research and is operated by the School of Life Sciences.

The two-storey building consists of a ‘GroDome’ located above ‘controlled environment chambers’. The futuristic GroDome, developed by Unigro, is designed to be four times more energy-efficient than traditional glasshouses.

Features of the GroDome include a heating and cooling system through which temperature is controlled entirely by manipulating airflow and a polycarbonate roof which insulates better than glass.

The new facility complements the School of Life Science’s existing Warwick Crop Centre based at Wellesbourne, which has a more traditional glasshouse.

The research conducted by School of Life Sciences in the GroDome and the controlled environment chambers will look to develop sustainable food sources in the light of the planet’s burgeoning population.

Professor Brian Thomas, deputy head of the School of Life Sciences, told the Boar that the new facility is “probably more suited to some of the research projects where you perhaps better temperature control in the glasshouse than you would get at Wellesbourne.”

On the importance of integration with other departments, he said: “The idea was to move the plant scientists to main campus because nowadays plant science is very multidisciplinary.”

One potential goal of the research conducted in the Phytobiology Facility is to lead scientists “to understand plants’ natural defences against diseases and how we can use plant genetics in particular to get plants which have resistance to diseases,” Professor Thomas added.

Vice-Chancellor Nigel Thrift has also stressed the importance of research into sustainable food production and the elimination of world hunger: “As a University we intend to rise to our part of that challenge.

“This £5 million investment sends a clear signal of how serious we are about this.”