Imperial: plant scientists reach for the skies with rooftop greenhouse

A £1 million rooftop greenhouse has been built on top of a five storey building at Imperial College London. The greenhouse will enable scientists in central London to grow large quantities of plants for experiments ranging from developing new feedstocks for biofuels to sequencing plant genomes.

The Imperial GroDome is the only rooftop facility of its kind in London. It provides Imperial’s plant scientists with over 200 square metres of temperature and light-controlled growing space, allowing them to carry out large-scale plant experiments in an urban location for the first time.

Since the structure was completed in April this year, three projects have taken root in the GroDome: producing biofuels from willows; tomato stress resistance and sequencing the tomato genome; and aphid resistance in plants.

The GroDome is the part of a development project to support plant science research on Imperial’s campus, which has also seen the refurbishment of laboratories and the installation of controlled environment plant growth rooms for smaller plants, as well as imaging labs and mass spectrometry facilities.