Qubit Systems Inc.

As the Earth warms and climate patterns change, plants are increasing exposed to abiotic and biotic stresses. This puts global food security at significant risk. Stress early in development can vastly reduce yield, so it is crucial to identify onset and mitigate as soon as possible.

Changes in chlorophyll fluorescence kinetics as indicators of stress occur far more swiftly than any visible manifestation. On the crop level such changes can be observed using the tower-mounted FLOX solar-induced fluorescence device manufactured by JB Hyperspectral and distributed in the Americas and Canada by Qubit Systems. https://qubitsystems.com/products/hyperspectral-analysis-vegetation-and-environmental-monitoring/

On a single plant basis, The handheld Fluorpen can be used to measure chlorophyll fluorescence kinetics in seconds or minutes by providing values of Fv/Fm or all parameters derived from a full quenching analysis. Whether stress is a result of high temperature, drought, nutrient deficiency or pathogens, chlorophyll fluorescence is the canary in the coal mine. https://qubitsystems.com/products/plants-algae-soil/z991-fluorpen/

If you'd like to know more about how chlorophyll fluorescence fits into your research or screening programme, we'd be glad to talk.

Qubit began life more then 30 years ago after CEO, Steve Hunt, was tasked with developing teaching labs for his +1000 Bio 101 students. Labs at the time involved students gazing at research equipment spitting out numbers (look but DON’T touch!), or using a stopwatch to time the progress of a bubble along a graduated scale (YAWN! Dr. Warburg).

There had to be a better way, so Qubit designed a range of sensors to monitor photosynthesis, respiration, N2 fixation, dissolved O2, and the environmental conditions that affect biological processes.

Three decades later, we still produce teaching equipment at very low cost, and provide intuitive data analysis software that is used with all our Q-teach packages. The manuals include experimental protocols for studying various aspects of plant, insect, animal and human physiology.

If you teach Biology in the laboratory, let us assist you - we know how tough it can be. https://qubitsystems.com/products/q-teach-packages/

The Q-Box was designed around a simple premise: create a gas exchange system that can be used for several different purposes without the researcher going bankrupt.

Qubit’s Q-Box platform is a modular gas exchange system that can be configured for plant CO2 analysis, soil CO2 flux, insect metabolism, small animal respiration, large animal respiration, and human breath analysis, among many other applications. Components are interchangeable, and analyzers can be swapped in and out easily as research needs evolve.

For institutions juggling instrumentation budgets across multiple research groups or teaching labs, this matters. A single platform that can serve a plant physiologist, an aquatic ecologist, and an insect respirometrist (is there such a word?) can reduce three procurement requests to one.

Also, in the unlikely event that a Q-Box component fails, give us a call and we’ll send a replacement. It takes two minutes to pop it in and you are back in business with little time lost.

If you have a research application and aren't sure which Q-BOX configuration fits best, get in touch. We're happy to talk it through. https://qubitsystems.com/products/q-box-research-packages/

I laughed at an advertisement on social media recently, which promised that if you follow a simple set of exercises, you could increase your VO2max from 26 to 65 mL O2.kg/min in just four weeks. That would be equivalent to converting a couch potato to an Olympic athlete in less than a month - such a miracle costing only the price of a cup of coffee per day.

Oh well… I suppose there’s one born every minute.

In reality, it takes a rigorous training regimen to increase VO2max significantly. Research suggests that an increase in VO2max of just 1 mL O2/kg/min from a personal baseline can decrease all cause morbidity by 10%. To measure such a change with confidence requires an accurate and dependable analysis system.

(The VO2max measurement on your smartwatch doesn’t cut it, by the way).

Our VOCO system measures VO2, VCO2 and heart rate directly. It’s wearable, and can be used during virtually any activity indoors or out (with synchronised swimming an exception).

If you'd like to see VOCO in action, or discuss how it works, we'd be glad to hear from you. https://www.voco-cpx.com/

We know it’s damned near impossible to convince some people that the world is perilously close to a number of environmentally disastrous tipping points, but you’ve just gotta keep on trying.

On World Environment Day we acknowledge all those researches who contribute so much to our understanding of the climate crisis, despite blowback from those who prefer to look the other way. Such research requires not only much reviled mathematical modellers but people with instruments in their hands, making careful, reproducible measurements of the processes that drive climate dynamics and ecosystem function.

At Qubit, we've been building instruments to measure gas exchange, respiration, photosynthesis, soil carbon and water flux since 1996. We hope to be a part of the climate solution, while minimising negative impacts as much as we can.

Nice place we’ve got here - let’s try to keep it that way.

We had a great first day at the 27th North American Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation Conference here at Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario — a homecoming of sorts, given Qubit's roots.

The NASNFC has been running for over 50 years, which is a reasonable indicator that the science still has things worth saying. Today's sessions more than confirmed that.

We're here through June 4th. If you're attending and want to talk instrumentation, find us at our booth.

The Haber-Bosch process for reducing N2 gas to ammonia (first developed for producing munitions) requires a temperature of 500C, a pressure of up 300 atmospheres and a catalyst to break that pesky triple bond. Rhizobia do the trick under ambient conditions and for benign purposes. We can learn a lot from microbes.

The traditional acetylene reduction assay — for decades the standard method for measuring nitrogenous activity — has well-documented limitations. Acetylene inhibits the key enzyme involved in N2-fixation by reducing the permeability of a barrier to O2 diffusion in the legume nodule, thus limiting the ATP production required for the energy-expensive reaction.

Direct measurement of H2 evolution, the natural by-product of nitrogenase activity, provides a more reliable method. Our Q-Box NF1LP Nitrogen Fixation Package measures H2 gas evolved by nodulated legume roots directly. The method used by Qubit scientists has shown that published rates of in vivo nitrogenous activity can be underestimated by more than 80%—something of a large error. Learn more here: https://qubitsystems.com/products/plants-algae-soil/nitrogen-fixation/q-box-nf1lp-nitrogen-fixation/

Visit us at the North American Symbiotic Nitrogen Fixation Conference at Queen’s University, Kingston, On June 1st to 4th.

That's a wrap on ACSM 2026! 👏

Thank you to everyone who stopped by the Qubit booth this week. It’s always a pleasure to talk metabolic measurement with people who care about data accuracy as much as we do.

If you didn't get a chance to see VOCO in person, or you want to dig deeper into what it can do for your research or training programs, we're happy to walk you through it. Contact us via the link here: https://www.voco-cpx.com/contact

Until next year.

Soil is not a passive substrate. It is one of the most metabolically active environments on the planet, hosting microbial communities whose collective respiration releases CO2 at rates that meaningfully influence global carbon budgets.

This is vitally important, particularly at a time when carbon accounting has become politically contested. Rough estimates are not sufficient. The numbers need to be accurate and defensible.

Qubit's soil respiration system allows researchers to measure CO2 flux in situ, with sensor stability and precision that field conditions demand. Sensors for CH4, N2O, H2 and NH3 can be added, and all gases monitored simultaneously on the same data acquisition platform.

Soil is critical for survival. Let’s get to understand it better.

We had another fantastic day in Salt Lake City, exhibiting at ACSM 2026. The conversations have been insightful, as always.

There's a lot of interest in what "accurate metabolic data" actually means in the field, on a treadmill, or on the track. That’s why we designed VOCO as a cost-effective, wearable CPX device that can be trusted to provide accurate data anywhere..

Still one more day left.

Visit us at Booth #105 to see VOCO in action.