Aachen, Germany
November 11, 2015
Global plant phenotyping specialist LemnaTec has announced a new automated light tunnel system to accurately measure PSII chlorophyll fluorescence, a key indicator of plant stress.
The light tunnel houses a motorised conveyor system to transport plants through the unit which is typically between 4 and 10 metres long. The first section contains some 3000 white LED lights to condition the plants by simulating sunlight conditions with 10 different light intensity profiles at 255 light intensity levels from 250 to 1000 µmol m-2 s-1.
Plants take between 10 and 20 minutes to pass through the tunnel during which time they adapt to the constant light conditions. At the end of the tunnel, the plants are exposed to a 2 second flash from approximately 2500 high intensity red light LEDs delivering up to 5000 µmol m-2 s-1 - nearly four times more powerful than direct sunlight. This saturates the reactive centres of the plants and, using the Kautsky effect, the resulting chlorophyll fluorescence is captured using a specially developed camera system.
During the 2 second flash, the system captures areas of up to 0.7 m² with 100 images at 2 mega-pixel resolution, synchronizing to within 1 millisecond. The resulting images are then processed using the LemnaTec OS software which converts images into meaningful physiological phenotyping data, in particular chlorophyll fluorescence parameters.
Chief Scientist Marcus Jansen comments, “As we expand the functionality of our software, we will add more and more hardware options to our portfolio. The light tunnel integrates with our 3D Scanalyzer to create a fully automated phenotyping system that provides detailed information on the whole plant quickly and easily”.
For more information about LemnaTec’s light tunnel system, or to speak to a company representative about its full range of plant phenotyping technology, please visit http://www.lemnatec.com/.
Since 1998, LemnaTec has led the development of digital phenotyping systems. Now with more than 1,000 users across the globe, LemnaTec is the world’s most successful supplier of complete phenotyping solutions for plant research.
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