Greenhouse to analyze the impact of climate change on plants

2007/11/01 Elhuyar Zientzia Iturria: Elhuyar aldizkaria

• Ingurumena

The Department of Plant Biology of the University of Navarra has installed a greenhouse with thermal gradients to investigate how climate change affects plants and propose growth criteria for the adaptation of plants to the new climate.

This greenhouse can _simulate a CO2 rich environment and continuous temperature growth. Early results indicate _that as CO2 increases, plant growth increases. But if plants grow in CO2 _enriched environments continuously, they adapt to this situation and growth slows down. This may be due to the emergence in these new conditions that favor climate change of limiting factors that influence plant growth, such as the scarcity of fertilizers in the soil. _Similarly, increasing CO2 and other changes in climate change parameters, such as increasing temperatures and decreasing rainfall, can reduce or completely eliminate beneficial effects. So far the research has focused on forage species such as alfalfa.