Department of Bioproduction Science,
Faculty of Horticulture, Chiba University,
Matsudo, Chiba, 271-8510, Japan
TEL & FAX: 81-47-308-8841・8842・8843
Department of Bioproduction Science,
Faculty of Horticulture, Chiba University,
Matsudo, Chiba, 271-8510, Japan
TEL & FAX: 81-47-308-8841・8842・8843
Click here for Japanese version.
Laboratory of Environmental Control Engineering,
Faculty of Horticulture, Chiba University, Japan
The Laboratory of Environmental Control Engineering was founded in 1965 and has been under the direction of Professor Toyoki Kozai since 1990. Professor Toyoki Kozai, Associate Professor Chieri Kubota, who joined the laboratory in 1995, and Associate Professor Changhoo Chun, who joined the laboratory in 1997 are the current faculty members who work with visiting scholars and students in the laboratory.
For the first two decades after the founding of the laboratory, most of our researches focused on optimizing the growth of plants in greenhouses and saving energy for plant production. Greenhouse technologies were introduced from Europe in the late 1960s, and our basic researches in environmental control in greenhouses helped to spread this technology in Japan. With the oil crises during the 1970s, our practical and theoretical approaches for saving energy in greenhouses earned much praise from international societies of agricultural engineering and horticulture. Also during this period, microcomputer technologies were extensively applied to the design and control of greenhouse environments.
From the early 1980s, the micropropagation industry in which tissue culture techniques are used to produce transplants of horticultural and forestry crops, started on a commercial basis in several countries including Japan. With its high production costs, however, the micropropagation technique could not be used for many crops in those days. Transplants of a few crops with high market value were produced utilizing this technique. Production of high-quality transplants with reasonable prices was the only way to establish this new agricultural business, i.e., micropropagated transplant production, and to meet the changing requirements of each country. With these changing needs, the 2nd era of our researches started. Much of these researches involved the improvement of microenvironments in culture vessels. The basic idea in these studies was that the culture vessels used in micropropagation were miniature greenhouses. With the knowledge and expertise achieved from our previous researches on the environmental control of greenhouses, we were able to develop a new micropropagation system that was quite different from the existing tissue culture systems. The output of our laboratory has been large in the last 10 years. Our contributions have included not only highly respected scientific papers, but also practical techniques that have been broadly adapted in the micropropagation industry throughout the world.
In the last five years, our research areas have broadened to include transplant production in closed systems. This has been the 3rd era of our researches. The model crops that we used for these studies included not only vegetatively propagated transplants but also seed-propagated transplants. We developed the new concept of “closed system for transplant production” to minimize the influences of nature, and to produce high-quality transplants with a minimum usage of resources. The goals of these studies have not changed from the goals of the micropropagation studies. We consider the factory-like facility as a scaled-up and modified culture vessel or greenhouse, which we have previously studied extensively. Our energetic researchers and students are currently developing new strategies for environmental control and production management to optimize the performance of transplant production systems. We are expecting many spin-offs from our research projects based on these new concepts, which will be beneficial not only in stimulating the agriculture industry but also in solving global problems of environmental conservation, food, resources and energy.
At present (1 September 2000), 33 researchers and students from 11 countries are actively working on diverse studies in transplant production systems using our well equipped research facilities. Some of current studies are listed below:
- Measurement and control of the environment in plant production systems
- Utilization of computer technologies in plant production systems
- Environmental control in tissue culture
- Development of plant production systems
- Analysis of photosynthetic and transpirational characteristics
- Low-temperature storage of transplants
- Development of lighting systems for transplant production
- Environmental manipulations to maximize the value of transplants
- System engineering to optimize the performance of transplant production systems
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