Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

With respect to food production, much of Canada qualifies as a challenging enviromnent for at least 6-8 months each year. In response to this challenge Canada has developed or adapted a broad range of controlled enviromnent technologies for greenhouse production. We have also attained world leadership in the research and technology required for food production for human space exploration activities. This research project proposes collaboration among COM DEV Canada Ltd., the Canadian Space Agency and the U. of Florida under the leadership of the Controlled Enviromnent Systems Research Facility (CESRF) at the U. of Guelph. The overall objectives of the proposed CRD project are to develop and test innovative technologies that will significantly enhance the reliability of controlled environment food production while providing a depth of insight into plant-enviromnent interaction not yet available to plant researchers. The project will assess physiology and productivity in response to control of and interactions between (i) light quality and quantity and (ii) recycled nutrient solution quality. New developments in light emitting diode (LED) technology will be exploited to provide supplemental lighting for plant growth in a precisely controlled environment while newly developed ion selective sensors will be used to address quality control issues for nutrient solutions both for terrestrial greenhouse and space life support applications. The interactions between lighting and nutrient quality will be assessed with non-destructive measurements of fluorescence as an indicator of plant health using a remote fluorescence detector recently developed by our collaborators at the University of Florida (Paul et aI., 2001, 2003, 2007) and in situ measurements of plant water status using stem psychrometers (Dixon and Tyree, 1984) recently improved with automated operation and wireless data access. The life support requirements in space will provide the technical ""pull"" for the research while terrestrial applications in the greenhouse industry and especially food production in Canada's north will see the major benefits. Other I