Mention greenery in central London and you’re probably envisaging Hyde Park or Hampstead Heath. But now scientists at Imperial College have created a futuristic £1 million rooftop ‘greenhouse’ on the top of a five-storey building on their South Kensington Campus.

The new GroDome, as it’s affectionately known, will allow scientists to grow large quantities of plants for a wide range of experiments. The greenhouse may hold the key to the future developments of biofuels or sequencing the tomato genome.

Unripe Cherry Tomatoes. Image Courtesy of Wikipedia.

With over 200 square metres of temperature and light controlled growing space for a variety of plant species, the GroDome is the only rooftop facility of its kind in London.

Since it’s opening in April earlier this year, three projects have already taken root in the GroDome:

1. Research into extracting sugars for biofuels from the cell walls of willow trees.

2. Understanding tomato stress resistance and sequencing the tomato genome. The long term aim being to produce crops that are better able to survive in today’s changing environment.

3. Studying how aphids, a serious pest, interact with plants, in the hope to breed resistance mechanisms into plants.

The GroDome is only part of a development project at Imperial’s South Kensington Campus. In order to help support and develop plant science research, a number of laboratories have also been refurbished and specialist controlled environment plant growth rooms installed.