A phytotron is an enclosed research
greenhouse
A greenhouse (also called a glasshouse, or, if with sufficient heating, a hothouse) is a structure with walls and roof made chiefly of Transparent ceramics, transparent material, such as glass, in which plants requiring regulated climatic condit ...
used for studying interactions between plants and the environment. It was a product of the disciplines of plant physiology and botany.
Overview
Phytotrons unified and extended earlier piecemeal efforts to claim total control of the whole environment. In both walk-in rooms and smaller reach-in cabinets, phytotrons produced and reproduced whole complex climates of many variables. In the first phytotrons each individual room was held at a constant unique temperature. The Australian phytotron, for example, had rooms maintaining 9°C, 12°C, 16°C, 20°C, 23°C, 26°C, 30°C, 34°C. Because some of the earliest controlled environment experiments showed that plants reacted differently in daytime temperatures and nighttime temperatures, the first experiments to observe the effect(s) of varying the daytime versus the nighttime temperature saw experimenters move their plants from higher to lower temperatures over the course of a daily, or any other variable or constant, routine. This rendered the variable “temperature” experimentally controllable. Even a brute force approach that tested each successive environmental variable and every variety of plant would serve to pinpoint specific environmental conditions to maximize growth. Expecting that more knowledge would surely come from greater technology, the next generation of phytotrons expanded in technological reach, in their ranges of environmental variables, and also in the degree of control over each variable. The phytotron in Stockholm offered a humidity controlled room and a custom built computer, as well as a low temperature room that extended the temperature range down to -25°C for the study of Nordic forests. After that, phytotron technology compressed whole environments into smaller cabinets able to be set to any desired combination of environmental conditions, which are still in use today.
The first phytotron was built under the direction of
Frits Warmolt Went
Frits Warmolt Went (May 18, 1903 – May 1, 1990) was a Dutch biologist whose 1928 experiment demonstrated the existence of auxin in plants.
Went's father was the prominent Dutch botanist F.A.F.C. Went. After graduating from the University of U ...
at the
California Institute of Technology
The California Institute of Technology (branded as Caltech or CIT)The university itself only spells its short form as "Caltech"; the institution considers other spellings such a"Cal Tech" and "CalTech" incorrect. The institute is also occasional ...
in 1949. It was funded by the
Harry B. Earhart Foundation, and was officially known as the Earhart Plant Research Laboratory. It acquired its more distinctive nickname evidently from a joking conversation between Caltech biologists James Bonner and Sam Wildman. Recalling the origin sometime in 1980s Bonner noted that:
"The Earhart Plant Research Laboratory
ascalled an environmentally controlled greenhouse but my first postdoctoral fellow
am Wildmanand I, sitting around about 1950, having coffee, decided it deserved a better or more euphonious name
.. We decided to call it a phytotron—phytos from the Greek word for plant, and tron as in cyclotron, a big complicated machine. Went was originally enormously annoyed by this word. But Dr. Millikan took it right up saying, ‘this edifice financed by Mr. Earhart, is going to do for plant biology what the cyclotron has done for physics,’ and he christened it a phytotron."
[James Bonner]
Interview by Graham Berry
Pasadena, California, March 13-14, 1980. Oral History Project, California Institute of Technology Archives. Retrieved Jan 5, 2014 from the World Wide Web: , p. 17-18. A similar account was given by Bonner in response to a query by George Beadle about the origin of “phytotron.” As Bonner told him, “at a morning coffee session in the old Greasy Spoon at Caltech Sam and I started out with the hypothesis that anything as fancy as the proposed Earhart Laboratory shouldn’t be called an air-conditioned greenhouse or anything simple like that, but should have a more magnificent name. We ended up with “thermophotophytotron” but quickly slimmed it down to “phytotron.” Letter from Bonner to Beadle. Sept 9, 1970. James Bonner papers. File 20.1. Archives. California Institute of Technology.
Phytotrons spread around the world between 1945 and the present day to Australia, France, Hungary, the Soviet Union, England, and the United States. Moreover, they have spurred variants such as the
Climatron
The Climatron is a greenhouse enclosed in a geodesic dome that is part of the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis. Initiated by then Garden director Frits W. Went, the dome is the world's first completely air-conditioned greenhouse and the f ...
at the
Missouri Botanical Garden
The Missouri Botanical Garden is a botanical garden located at 4344 Shaw Boulevard in St. Louis, Missouri. It is also known informally as Shaw's Garden for founder and philanthropist Henry Shaw. Its herbarium, with more than 6.6 million spe ...
, the
Biotron at the
University of Wisconsin-Madison
A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States, the ...
, the
Ecotron
An Ecotron is an experimental instrument in ecology consisting of a controlled environment which makes it possible to simultaneously condition the environment of natural, simplified, or completely artificial ecosystems and measure the processes gen ...
at
Imperial College London
Imperial College London (legally Imperial College of Science, Technology and Medicine) is a public research university in London, United Kingdom. Its history began with Prince Albert, consort of Queen Victoria, who developed his vision for a cu ...
and the
Brisatron at the
Savannah River Ecology Laboratory
The Savannah River Site (SRS) is a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) reservation in the United States in the state of South Carolina, located on land in Aiken, Allendale, and Barnwell counties adjacent to the Savannah River, southeast of Augus ...
.
See also
*
Biotron (disambiguation) Biotron may refer to:
* Biotron, a controlled ecological life-support system used for studying a living organism's response to specific environmental conditions or to produce uniform organisms for use in experiments
* Space Environment Simulation ...
References
* {{cite journal, last1=Munns, first1=David P.D., title=Controlling the Environment: The Australian Phytotron, the Colombo Plan, and Postcolonial Science, journal=British Scholar, date=March 2010, volume=2, issue=2, pages=197–226, doi=10.3366/brs.2010.0203}
David P.D. Munns, ''Engineering the Environment: Phytotrons and the Quest to Control Climate in the Cold War'' (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).
External links
The NCAR PhytotronThe Phytotron at World of Trons
Greenhouses
Atmospheric chemistry