Using GrowBots to Study Heat and Nutrient Stress in Basil

We present how a novel type of robot called a food computer can be used to simulate abiotic stresses and study their impact on hydroponically grown Italian basil, Ocimum basilicum. The food computer called the GrowBot is a tabletop sized robotic greenhouse for growing edible food plants. The GrowBot's actuators were used to alter the environmental conditions in the growth chamber to study different aspects of plant growth and food production in varying climate scenarios. The experiments show how we can used the LED lights to control the temperature to a certain, desired range (29ºC – 35ºC) for the heat stress experiments, while measurements show that we can simultaneously obtain the photosythetically active radition (PAR) values to be in the ideal range for growth of the basil plants.