Control and Modeling of Plant Growth : A versatile system for mineral nutrient addition and feed-back monitoring

Sammanfattning: Studying plants under controlled environmental conditions is a key component of current research. This thesis concentrates on the study of plant growth under nutrient-limiting condi-tions. The first objective is the design and construction of a prototype of a system which is able to supply nutrient so-lutions of prescribed time-dependent concentration to labo-ratory plants. The system, once configured via a PC, oper-ates fully automatically without the need for human inter-ference. The hardware setup is made of basic electric com-ponents, solenoid pinch valves, mixing pumps and metering pumps while the software is implemented in NI LabVIEW. In addition a dynamic model of plant growth is deployed for investigating possible influence on growth with help of the de-signed system. The focus hereby lies on investigating effects on RGR and steady-state growth during the exponential phase of plant growth.