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While plants can be altered genetically to produce different or more desirable traits, plants with the same genetics may naturally vary in color, size, texture growth rate, yield, flavor, and nutrient density depending on the environmental conditions in which they are grown.
In Food Computers, a set of environmental variables that could affect the plant (e.g. the pH and nutrients in the water, the temperature and humidity, the intensity and timing of the lights) is packaged up with small scripts of code to maintain a very specific climate inside the growth chamber. This data packet of conditions are what we call “Climate Recipes.”
Users create, download and run Climate Recipes to produce unique phenotypic results in plants. The data collected during their growth cycle is recorded and filed in an open-source digital library called the Open Phenome (archive.org link).
With Climate Recipes, Food Computers, and the Open Phenome, nerdfarmers can join together in a citizen science experiment to cross link environmental, biologic, genetic variables and other cultivation inputs to phenotypic outputs in plants (like nutrition, color, flavor), then share, borrow, scale up, and improve their results around the world, instantly.
Examples of recipes we use at OpenAg for test and research.
{
"_id": "long_test_recipe",
"format": "simple",
"operations": [
[
0,
"air_temperature",
25
],
[
3600,
"air_temperature",
26
]
]
}