ChaoticGenetics

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≡ Speed Breeding Growth Chamber

Speed Breeding Growth Chamber

2019-08-13, 10:39 AM

Current internal temperature (F)78.3
Current external temperature (F)72.6
Heat mat setting (F)70.0
Fan trigger (F)90.0
Mat down temp (F)75.0
Mat up temp (F)73.0

Time lapse growth chamber video

Speed breeding is a technique used to decrease generation time and accelerate single seed descent plant breeding. It has achieved a 2 – 3 fold increase in the number of generations per year possible for several crops including wheat, canola and chickpea (Watson, 2018). Our goal is to test the effectiveness of speed breeding in Capsicum. Currently the chamber is being used to germinate and jump start plants for our 2019 breeding pool. Once those plants have been transplanted we will conduct a controlled experiment to investigate the effects of photocycle manipulation on the generation time of Capsicum.

Growth chamber temperature

temperature plot

Internal temperature is maintained by a 100 W heat pad and waste heat from the LED growlights. Temperature is monitored with a Raspberry Pi Zero W and four DS18B20 temperature senors – one outside and three inside. If the chamber gets too hot, the Raspberry kicks on a set of scavenged 12 V server case fans via a TIP120 Darlington transistor. The temperature trigger is set to 32 °C (~90 °F) and the heat mat is set to 29 °C (~85 °F), the fans rarely fire, except on hot days in the summer.