Harrington greenhouse allows P.E.I. scientists to continue research year-round 

The lights in the greenhouse at the Harrington research farm are giving agricultural researchers on P.E.I. the opportunity to conduct their work year-round. 

The facility operated by Agriculture and Agri-Food Canada uses automated lighting as well as drip irrigation systems to trick crops into thinking it's early summer.

Research biologist Dan MacEachern is doing work on spring barley, planted in the greenhouse in mid-September.

He said the goal is to use the plants for performing crosses, or breeding barley varieties, that will perform well in Atlantic Canada. 

"We're essentially trying to replicate mid-summer conditions. We want to get as much growth as we can," MacEachern said.

"We take plants with desirable traits that we're looking for. And then hopefully the babies will turn out to be a great new variety." 

MacEachern said researchers are looking for high yield, disease resistance and, more recently, malting characteristics for the craft brewing industry.

Invaluable tool

MacEachern said the greenhouse is an invaluable tool in the research.

"Using the greenhouse essentially gives us an extra year so we can shave a year off of the whole production cycle of developing a variety by having a greenhouse like this," MacEachern said.

Using the greenhouse essentially gives us an extra year so we can shave a year off of the whole production cycle—Dan MacEachern, research biologist 

"You get a lot of questions from people wondering what's going on down here, because if you're coming by in the early morning or at night, all you see is a big haze in the sky from the lights being on," MacEachern said.

"I think a lot of people don't know what we're doing down here, but we're doing stuff like this where we're trying to breed good barley varieties for Atlantic Canada."

MacEachern said there is an added benefit to the greenhouse, with its bright lights going 16 hours a day. 

"What's great is that if you look outside today, it's just gloomy and rainy and kind of sad outside, and you can come into a spot like this, and it definitely lifts your spirits."

Weed science

Weed scientist Andrew McKenzie-Gopsill said the greenhouse conditions are also crucial to the work he is doing, studying the weed seed banks in P.E.I. fields.

He takes soil cores and then concentrates them down to the weed seeds, which are grown in trays for more than a year and a half. 

"That seed bank is really a measure of all of your management practices through time, because for a seed to get into that seed bank, you would have had to have that plant there at some point," McKenzie-Gopsill said. 

McKenzie-Gopsill said his work is a long-term experiment, because it takes years to generate results. 

"I've been at this here now for five years, and we're starting to see some cover crops that do have a positive effect on the weed seed bank, reducing the amount of weed seeds that are present," McKenzie-Gopsill said.
 
"Having fewer weeds in their field means less competition to the crop, it means less mechanical herbicides, less management actions for the producers, which ultimately will save the money."

'It's essential'

McKenzie-Gopsill said his work also benefits from the greenhouse. 

"It's essential. We would not be able to do any of this type of work without a greenhouse. It's just not possible without the artificial conditions that we need," McKenzie-Gopsill said.  

"There's only so much we can do out in the field. This really extends the amount of time that we can do research throughout the year." 

McKenzie-Gopsill said the lighting and watering systems are automated, meaning less work for researchers. 

"We can set them up to be specifically exactly what we want. So we have our lights in here set for 16-hour days," McKenzie-Gopsill said.  

"That's just to try and stimulate germination of those weed seeds to try and trick them into thinking it's early summer."

McKenzie-Gopsill said automated watering also helps the researchers do their work as effectively as possible. 

"As well as our irrigation lines, we don't have to worry about weekends or holidays. We know that our experiments are getting the amount of water that they need," McKenzie-Gopsill said.

"Some of my colleagues at other centres don't have access to the same type of facilities that we do, so that really gives us quite an advantage."