The first stop on our tour was the area where plant analysis is being done. We couldn’t take pictures at this point so I’m using some from the ones provided to us. We actually received some pens in our media kits that contain a built-in memory stick. Pretty cool.

The plant analysis group has 24 members who are analyzing for things like dna and protein. It’s a high throughput facility. They literally deal with hundreds of thousands of plants at a time.

In order to get this done they’ve developed some robotic sample handlers that help get this job done. Our presenter in this area was Mary Fielder.