CHAP’s Advanced Glasshouse Facility can be found at Stockbridge Technology Centre (STC), near Selby.
This facility will mean that new plant protection products and integrated crop protection programmes can be robustly assessed in field, glasshouse and hydroponic systems. This will benefit manufactures by providing more reliable trial conditions for their products, especially for biopesticides, with knock-on benefits to the crop production sector in the form of increased product availability.
The facility will provide a flexible and customisable fully-controlled glasshouse, permitting bespoke commercially-representative testing of plant protection products and integrated pest management programmes. It includes a suite of 60 custom-designed deep-water hydroponic units, allowing both plant protection programmes and exotox studies to be conducted.
The Glasshouse builds upon existing CHAP capabilities in early-stage biopesticide discovery and development and mesocosm-scale ecotoxicology trials and highly controlled field trials using precision spray application.