Aberystwyth

National Plant Phonemics Centre

U3A Aberystwyth paid a visit to the nearby National Plant Phonemics Centre where one of our members has a part time job. The NPPC is a national UK facility, and one of a very few such worldwide.

Housed at Aberystwyth university, the Centre is a “robotic greenhouse”, permitting hundreds of plants to be automatically watered and monitored, with many images being collected of each on a daily basis – the image store increases by an average of 10000 per day.

The Centre's research tries to identify varieties of plant (such as cereals) that respond well to particular conditions and is thus part of the “Food security” movement that is evident globally. Historically, plant monitoring has been done intermittently (and not always reliably) by human observers, and the automatic facility represents a great step forward for the science in providing daily, reliable monitoring of various kinds.

The pictures below show:
1. Some plants being conveyed into imaging cabins
2. Aber U3A inspecting the automated greenhouse

Fuller information is at
http://www.aber.ac.uk/en/media/departmental/ibers/facilities/phenomicscentre/BBC-FOCUS-NPPC-Feature.pdf
http://www.plant-phenomics.ac.uk/en/

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