Plant Science Leaders - Julie Bell

The Boyce Thompson Institute (BTI) is an independent, not-for-profit research institute located on the Cornell University campus in Ithaca, New York. At the heart of its operation is the Plant Growth Facility, a 25,000 sq. ft. complex encompassing greenhouses, growth chambers, a plant functional genomics room, a dew room, a plant pathogen room, and a seed harvest room.

Approximately 24 research teams and 80–100 scientists actively utilize BTI’s advanced plant science facilities to conduct diverse projects in areas such as plant genomics, molecular biology, and crop physiology. Their collective work supports global initiatives in food security, climate resilience, and sustainable agriculture through cutting-edge plant research.

Conviron recently sat down with BTI’s Plant Growth Facility Manager Julie Bell to learn how she and her team keep operations running smoothly and collaborate with plant scientists to support their world-class research.

What is your role at the Plant Growth Facility?

Our mission at the Boyce Thompson Institute is rooted in basic plant science: areas like gene discovery, stress physiology, and understanding how plants work so that we can contribute to healthier, more sustainable food systems.

I manage the entire Plant Growth Facility, which includes about 20 greenhouses and 40 growth chambers of different sizes. My staff and I handle everything from watering plants to space allocation, pest management, maintenance, programming, and repairs. I’m the point person for making sure everything works effectively so our researchers can achieve their goals.

What does a typical day look like?

We check on the plants throughout the facility every day. We’re on top of pest and disease control, pesticide applications, and troubleshooting any issues that come up in the chambers or greenhouses.

My team and I also spend a lot of time consulting with researchers. It’s interesting; many plant scientists are focused mainly on lab work and don’t necessarily know how to set the growing conditions per se for the plants themselves. Identifying proper growing regimes and helping them by programming environmental conditions in our chambers is key for producing optimal research specimens. That’s where a facility manager comes in. I help them to translate their research goals into successful growing conditions at the facility and execute their experiments.

Do all researchers know what conditions to set for their plants?

It varies. Some researchers depend on the plant growth facility staff to identify the appropriate settings and conditions for their research species. Others have very specific instructions because they know exactly what they want and are veterans in their research field, or they are reliant on what's worked in another lab or location; however, conditions aren’t always one-size-fits-all.

We help researchers understand what will work best in our chambers and greenhouses given the control capabilities of our equipment. Some experiments also require non-optimal growing conditions to study stress responses. Pathologists might need high humidity to grow pathogens, or geneticists may want to stress plants under high heat or light. We adapt accordingly.

How many researchers use the facility, and what’s the scale of the operation?

We currently support 24 different lab groups, which means anywhere from 80 to 100 individual users. On the greenhouse side, we have 20 individually controlled houses that are each just under 500 square feet. For plant growth chambers, we have 40 total; 24 reach-in growth chambers and 16 walk-ins growth rooms.

The chambers and rooms range anywhere from small 7-sq. ft. reach-in chambers to a 500 sq. ft. walk-in that houses our new state-of-the-art high throughput phenotyping equipment. It’s a wide mix of sizes, ages, controllers, and growth capabilities, so managing all of those variations and parameters is a big part of the job.

With so much equipment, how do you keep track of maintenance and performance?

We rely on a combination of systems. We have maintenance logs posted at every chamber and checklists we go through daily, weekly, quarterly, and annually. We also have a central control system that ties into both Conviron and Argus technologies. We use additional sensors and data loggers to make sure the control system data is accurate and on track.

We also make it a point not to rely on alarms. Depending on set points and equipment, there are times when conditions change enough to impact the plants but without triggering an alarm. We check growing conditions throughout the facility regardless of alarm status so we can quickly see if subtle issues occur and adjust when we need to.

We’re also working on a QR code-based logging system that will provide us with a more easily accessible, digital log of facility checks and actions.

What upgrades or retrofits have you been working on?

Lighting is a big one. We’re gradually moving to LED lighting in our greenhouses and chambers with older style T-12 and T-8 fluorescent fixtures. The upfront cost of LED’s has come down, and they save energy long-term, so we’ve been tackling those upgrades in stages, one room at a time.

Controls are another area. We recently finished a multi-year upgrade from older (Classic) Argus panels to Argus Titan software, which we phased in at four greenhouses at a time. Additionally, we’ve been updating several obsolete chamber controllers over the past several years in order to maintain continuity and use of our older chambers into the future. Phasing projects this way helps to spread out costs and lets us adjust our processes before committing to larger changes.

Sometimes retrofits extend the life of older chambers, but eventually, some of them just reach the point where replacement is the best option. We have a rolling five-year capital plan so we can prioritize over time.

How do you help researchers handle changes, like upgrades to equipment or lighting?

Equipment changes can be challenging for researchers, especially if they’ve built a body of work under certain conditions. Some worry that even a small shift, like switching to a different lighting spectrum, could affect results. Others are open and eager to have the most efficient, sustainable options. My role is to balance those perspectives.

A phased approach helps here as well because researchers can get accustomed to new equipment while the versions they are already accustomed to are still available. This way too we can always communicate about what’s working well or not so well to minimize the chance of disruption to their research.

How does space allocation and billing work for the facility?

We charge by square foot per month. For example, reach-in chambers are billed as a unit, while large walk-ins or greenhouses can be divided into smaller rental sections. BTI subsidizes about half of the actual costs for internal use, so it’s definitely a benefit for our researchers.

What excites you most about BTI’s facilities right now?

Our new phenotyping chamber is a highlight. It’s a 500-square-foot space with advanced imaging equipment, and it’s already expanding what researchers can do. Beyond that, I’m excited by the variety of projects we support, from stress physiology to genomics to sustainable crop development. It’s rewarding to know our team’s work behind the scenes makes these discoveries possible.

Learn more about BTI's Plant Growth Facility