Dr. Barry Flinn gave us a tour of the Institute. He is the Sustainable Renewable Resource Supervisor. At the Institute they use a knowledge base approach including mechanical engineering, polymers, motor sports, and agriculture. The Institute houses the Piedmont Governor's School, adjunct facility from Virginia Tech, and Ph.D students research. They have done many research projects including high value horticulture/forestry crop and bio based product development as well as development and genetic enhancement of biofuels and bioenergy crops. They did research on tomatoes, day lilies, strawberries, azaleas, hellebores, goji, impatiens, and miscanthus.
The Institute makes all of their own media and it goes through the autoclave. They also have a smart table that takes pictures everyday of each plant to make a growth curve. They can analyze the data from the smart table without being present.
They work in partnership with Dan River Plants. Dan River Plants has been open 8 months now and have so many orders they are struggling to fill them. They sell plants in stage 2-4 to customers.
Seeing all of the different variations at both labs was very interesting. Also getting to see the start to finish product was neat. I enjoyed seeing their greenhouse and the new technology, especially the movable tables that you can push and they will roll to the other side to make an aisle where it is needed.
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