Cranfield Soil and Agrifood Institute
Cranfield University
Cranfield is home to a range of plant growth facilities for experimental work involving plant physiology, plant phenotyping, plant-microbe interactions, and plant-soil interactions. The facilities include a unique platform for assessing pilot scale crop-soil systems and sensor development, and they integrate with our Soil Management Facility, Postharvest facilities and with the CHAP and AgriEPI AgriTech Centres for Agricultural Innovation.
Incorporating a multi-sensor system the facility is designed to conduct in-depth research into plant phenotyping, crop and soil properties and management.
The phenotyping imaging, sensor and analysing equipment includes:
- Visible RGB Camera
- Laser Scanner
- Hyperspectral VNIR sensor
- Hyperspectral SWIR sensor
- PSII Fluorescence Camera
- FLIR Thermal Camera
What we do
Cranfield is home to a range of plant growth facilities for experimental work involving plant physiology, plant phenotyping, plant-microbe interactions, and plant-soil interactions. The facilities include a unique platform for assessing pilot scale crop-soil systems and sensor development, and they integrate with our Soil Management Facility, Postharvest facilities and with the CHAP and Agri-EPI Agri-Tech Centres for Agricultural Innovation.
The core phenotyping platform is the CHAP owned 9m high, 300 m2 Venlo glasshouse housing an Agri-EPI owned overhead LemnaTec sensor gantry; this provides a unique facility for assessing crop-soil systems in 1 m3 soil lysimeters, scannable with multiple state-of-the-art sensors, alongside a suite of UAV based phenotyping sensors replicating glasshouse activities in field scenarios.
Projects
- Using roots to bio-engineer soil
- Early onset disease detection in lettuce and salad onions
- Soil Profile Trials to Support Calcareous Grassland
