Plants
Plant research in the School is supported by state-of-the-art methodologies and equipment and helps to enhance our understanding of plant pathogens, horticultural and ecological studies as well as food security and crop science.
School-based Facilities open to all include:
- Algal Innovation Centre
- Plant Growth Facility at the Deparment of Plant Sciences
- Sainsbury Laboratory Plant Growth Facilities
Algal Innovation Centre
Equipment and services
- Algal growth and harvesting equipment, including VariconAqua 1L vertical glass bioreactors, 2 x VariconAqua 65L vertical airlift bioreactors and 2 x 150L horizontal rotary bioreactors, framework for 5-30L hanging bag bioreactors
- Cell harvesting (membrane harvester)
- Light microscope
- Culture growth determination (Spectrophotometer)
- Analysis of different culture parameters inc. temp, N, P, dO, pH etc. (HACH probes)
- FT-IR fingerprinting
- Lipid profiling (using GC-MS and GC-FID)
- Coulter cell counter
- Pigment profiling (HPLC-PDA)
- High throughput Metabolomics
- Cell culture collection (temperate and polar species)
Location
The facility is located in the Sainsbury Laboratory (see map)
Contact
Algal Innovation: algae@plantsci.cam.ac.uk
Access and Training
The Algal Innovation Centre is open to all members of the University and in house training is provided.
Plant Growth Facility at the Department of Plant Sciences
The Department has a dedicated facility located in the Botanic Garden, providing state-of-the-art controlled environment capabilities and containment facilities for plant pathogen work. A glasshouse and outdoor plots support horticultural and ecological studies.
Contact
Plant Growth Facilities Manager: Nigel Boulding
Sainsbury Laboratory Plant Growth Facilities
Equipment
- Greenhouse with 6 glasshouse zones (Building B Level 1)
- Controlled Growth Facilities: 30 individual walk-in chambers with artificial light and tight temperature control (Building B Basement Level), 7 individual walk-in chambers and 5 large growth cabinets (Building A Basement Level), plus a range of sterile growth rooms and cabinets (Building A Laboratory level).