Innovation Campus’ greenhouse is home to a multimillion dollar phenotyping system that helps researchers get a better picture of what is going on with plants — characteristics that are invisible — by looking at them through different forms of lights and images. Plants are put on a conveyer system and will usually stay on them for their whole lives.
Amy Hilske, greenhouse director, said statisticians came up with a way to randomize the plants within the room to minimize factors of variation.
While on the conveyer belt system, the plants will travel through four different chambers, each containing cameras that take various types of pictures, including infrared, hyperspectral and more, in order to see things that one wouldn’t be able to see with the naked eye.