The "Plants" table contains information about the experiment setup and experimental design.
It includes information about each position (pot) in the experiment.
The first six columns from the left include the following:
- Plant Name - The nickname of the plant (or pot). The plant name may have different meanings: geographic location, treatment, genetic line, replicate number, and any combination of meanings. The selected name should allow easy identification of each plant.
- Position - The alias of the unit from the "Positions" table. The position is assigned to each plant according to its physical location.
- Treatment Plan - The name of the assigned irrigation treatment plan from the "Treatments Scenarios" section.
- Step - The current step number of the assigned treatment plan. *Changes automatically when steps are changed.
- Reference Weather Station - The name of the position which will be used as a reference for VPD and Gs calculation. *The reference position must be connected to a local weather sensor (VP 4/ATMOS 14).
- Reference Control Plant - The name of the position which will be used as a reference for irrigation using the "Previous day transpiration of control plant" option in the "Irrigation Treatments" section.
The next five columns contain the weight values (in grams) of the different components composing each pot unit (not including the plant):
These weights are measured at the experiment set-up stage, before the experiment starts. See the Experiment setup protocol for more details about how to perform these measurements.
- Tare Weight - The total weight of all static components that are placed on the scale unit - Pot set, support stick, dripper assembly, surface cover, and any other object except the growing medium, water, and plant material.
- Seedling Bulk Soil Weight - The weight of the plug of the transplanted plant, fully watered (after free drainage stops). *Not including the plant roots.
- Soil Dry Weight - The oven-dry (after heating to 105 °C) weight of the growing medium in the pot. *Calculated automatically by the system.
- Soil Wet Weight - The weight of the growing medium in the pot at "pot capacity" (The maximum water holding capacity that a pot can hold without it draining out). It is measured after saturating the pot (using the system's irrigation system) and waiting for free drainage to stop.
- Reserve Water Inventory - The weight of the water that remains in the pot reservoir container after drainage has stopped.
The last columns in the table include more information about the soil and plant, as well as labels that help categorize groups of plants based on various factors.
- Soil Type - The selected "Soil Type" will determine which calibration curve will be applied to the raw data from the soil sensor to get the correct soil Volumetric Water Content (VWC) values.
- Soil Volume - The measured or estimated volume of the growing medium inside the pot in (ml). *The soil volume value is used in the calculation of several parameters.
- Plant Initial Net Weight - The measured or estimated net weight of the plant inside the pot on the first day of the experiment.
- #Any - A user-made tag for separating groups of plants for presentation or analysis on SPAC-Analytics.