Qubit Systems Inc.

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Qubit Systems Inc. Manufactures and sells instrumentation for industry, research and teaching in all biological and environmental sciences, including plant phenotyping

Necessity is the Mother of Invention. She is also what drove the founding of Qubit Systems.Thirty years ago, Qubit’s fou...
10/20/2026

Necessity is the Mother of Invention. She is also what drove the founding of Qubit Systems.

Thirty years ago, Qubit’s founders were involved in plant science research at Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada, predominantly in the fields of photosynthesis, nitrogen fixation and respiration. Limited by the shortcomings of available technology to study these physiological processes, they designed and built novel instruments that greatly extended measurement possibilities, including the world’s first differential O2 analyser that can resolve a 1 ppm O2 differential against air (https://qubitsystems.com/products/s104-dox-differential-o2-analyzer/).

The research world took note of ensuing publications and asked where such instruments could be purchased. The technology transfer arm of Queen’s University noted the commercial opportunity and Queen’s University Biological Instrumentation and Technology Inc. came into being (www.qubitsystems.com).

Like many university researchers, the Qubit founders were also teachers, and realised that inexpensive but sophisticated versions of research equipment could be developed for the teaching laboratory.

Three decades later, Qubit Systems has 300 products that are used worldwide in plant, animal, insect, aquatic and human biology. Innovation continues, and the provision of the highest quality analysers for research and teaching, at sensible prices, will always be our commitment.

www.qubitsystems.com

With forest fires raging with unprecedented ferocity, frequent floods causing chaos where once they were rare, and droug...
10/16/2026

With forest fires raging with unprecedented ferocity, frequent floods causing chaos where once they were rare, and drought shrinking rivers and reservoirs to historical lows, it’s clear that climate change, whatever the cause, is perilous to our survival.

Food security is a pressing problem for the future, and key to such security is primary production through photosynthesis. Plants evolve slowly, and the natural development of survival mechanisms can’t keep up with the pace of changing environments. Scientists are working assiduously to develop crops resistant to high temperatures and limited water supply, but this takes time that is rapidly running out. Also, novel crop varieties must undergo screening in the lab and the field to ensure that their promise of yield is met. That’s a tall order when you are dealing with huge plant populations.

Fortunately, long before leaves wilt or harvests decline, changes begin within the photosynthetic machinery of plants that are strong indicators of stress and future productivity. Alterations in chlorophyll fluorescence kinetics provide some of the earliest indicators of environmental stress, often days or weeks before symptoms become visible. Such measurements can be made extremely rapidly, continuously, and non-invasively, and are invaluable for researchers studying drought, heat stress, nutrient deficiency and disease.

Qubit's various instruments for measuring chlorophyll fluorescence, from the handheld Fluorpen for individual leaf measurements (https://qubitsystems.com/products/plants-algae-soil/chlorophyll-fluorescence/) to the FLOX solar-induced fluorescence system for monitoring entire canopies (https://qubitsystems.com/products/hyperspectral-analysis-vegetation-and-environmental-monitoring/), are essential tools in assessing the effects of climate degradation and the effectiveness of strategies to limit food insecurity.

If you'd like to discuss chlorophyll fluorescence measurements in your research, we'd be glad to hear from you.

The relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and healthy aging is one of the more robustly supported findings in e...
10/13/2026

The relationship between cardiorespiratory fitness and healthy aging is one of the more robustly supported findings in exercise science. VO2 max declines by approximately 10% per decade after the age of 30 in sedentary individuals, a trajectory that correlates with increased risk of cardiovascular disease, metabolic dysfunction, and all-cause mortality in ways that are well-documented and, to a degree, modifiable.

The challenge for clinicians and researchers working with older populations is that CPX testing in the lab using an ergometer is not always practical or appropriate. Exercise tolerance varies considerably. Hospital-based metabolic carts require infrastructure and staffing that community and outpatient settings do not always have.

VOCO provides an affordable, field-ready alternative. Wearable, breath-by-breath measurement of VO2, VCO2, and RER during any activity -- walking, cycling, or any protocol appropriate for the population being tested. And it is validated against a gold standard metabolic calibration device.

If you are working in exercise physiology, geriatric medicine, or cardiac rehabilitation and want to discuss VOCO in your research context, we'd be glad to hear from you.

https://www.voco-cpx.com/

Wishing all our Canadian customers, friends, and family a very Happy Thanksgiving!We’re grateful for the continued suppo...
10/11/2026

Wishing all our Canadian customers, friends, and family a very Happy Thanksgiving!

We’re grateful for the continued support, collaboration, and curiosity that make our work in science so rewarding. Have a wonderful long weekend!

World Octopus Day seems an appropriate occasion to celebrate one of the more physiologically interesting animals in the ...
10/08/2026

World Octopus Day seems an appropriate occasion to celebrate one of the more physiologically interesting animals in the ocean.

The octopus has three hearts. Two branchial hearts pump blood through the gills, and a third systemic heart circulates blood to the rest of the body — except when the octopus swims. That’s why octopuses prefer crawling, and find sustained swimming exhausting.

Octopus blood is blue, due to haemocyanin rather than haemoglobin as the oxygen-carrying molecule — a copper-based system that is less efficient than iron-based haemoglobin at body temperature but performs rather better in cold, low-oxygen conditions. This matters when you live on the seafloor.

Measuring the metabolic rate of a cephalopod is, as might be expected, an interesting experimental challenge. They are intelligent enough to find respirometry chambers objectionable and creative enough to avoid them. Qubit’s Q-Box Aqua respirometry package has been used in cephalopod metabolic studies by Dr. Tyson McCormack at Mount Alison University in Nova Scotia, but with cuttlefish, not octopuses (https://doi.org/10.1152/ajpregu.00459.2015).

On World Octopus Day, we salute both the octopus and all those people who use octopuses (or octopodes from the Greek) as the correct plural. Octopi? – there are no such things!

https://qubitsystems.com/products/q-box-aqua-aquatic-respiration/

Leaf senescence, the controlled breakdown of chlorophyll, the resorption of nitrogen, and the systematic dismantling of ...
10/06/2026

Leaf senescence, the controlled breakdown of chlorophyll, the resorption of nitrogen, and the systematic dismantling of photosynthetic machinery in preparation for winter, is one of the more elegant examples of regulated physiology in the plant kingdom. The yellowing of leaves is not decay but a precisely orchestrated withdrawal of resources that the plant will reuse in spring.

For researchers studying senescence, the transition from photosynthetically active to senescing tissue is detectable by measuring chlorophyll fluorescence parameters well before any visible colour change occurs. Fv/Fm declines. Quenching patterns shift. The onset and progression of senescence can be monitored noninvasively day by day.

Our inexpensive, handheld Z991 FluorPen is the perfect tool for researchers interested in tracking senescence, stress responses, and seasonal photosynthetic dynamics.

If you'd like to know more about how chlorophyll fluorescence measurements may enhance your research, we'd be glad to talk.

https://qubitsystems.com/products/z991-fluorpen/

Autumn is an instructive time to be measuring soil respiration.As temperatures drop and leaf litter begins to accumulate...
10/01/2026

Autumn is an instructive time to be measuring soil respiration.

As temperatures drop and leaf litter begins to accumulate, the microbial community in the soil undergoes a transition that is reflected in CO2 flux rates. The breakdown of fresh organic matter, such as leaves, root exudates, and crop residues, temporarily increases microbial activity and CO2 release even as photosynthesis above ground is winding down. The net carbon balance of the soil shifts in ways of interest to researchers modelling seasonal carbon dynamics.

For anyone tracking soil carbon flux across seasons, October measurements are some of the most interesting of the year. The system is not at equilibrium. It is responding to change, and the instrumentation needs to be sensitive enough to capture dynamics accurately.

Our Q-Box SR1D Soil Respiration Package measures CO2 flux in situ, with a soil chamber placed directly over the ground surface. It can also be used in the lab with samples incubated in chambers for flow-through measurements of gas exchange.

If you are a soil scientist working on carbon dynamics and want to talk through your measurement setup, we'd be glad to help.

https://qubitsystems.com/products/q-box-sr1lp-soil-respiration/

10/01/2026

🧡 A little girl, a new orange shirt, and the day it was taken from her

In 1973, six-year-old Phyllis Webstad was getting ready for her very first day of school.

She lived with her grandmother on the Dog Creek reserve in British Columbia. Her family didn't have much, but her grandmother took her to town to buy a new outfit for the big day. Phyllis chose a bright, shiny orange shirt with string laced up the front. She loved it. She couldn't wait to wear it.

She was going to St. Joseph Mission, a residential school near Williams Lake, BC.

When she arrived, her clothes were taken away. Including the orange shirt.

She never wore it again.

It may sound like a small thing. But for Phyllis, that shirt came to stand for something much bigger: the feeling that her feelings didn't matter, and that no one cared. It was a feeling shared by thousands of Indigenous children who were separated from their families, their language and their culture.

And Phyllis wasn't the first in her family to go through it. She was the third generation to attend the same residential school, after her grandmother and her mother.

📜 How one story became a national day

In 2013, Phyllis shared her story publicly for the first time at the St. Joseph Mission Residential School Commemoration Project and Reunion in Williams Lake. Her story spread quickly, and Orange Shirt Day was born.

September 30 was chosen for a reason: it's the time of year when Indigenous children were historically taken from their homes and sent to residential schools.

What began as one woman's memory spread across the country. Schools, workplaces and communities started wearing orange every September 30, under one simple message:

🧡 Every Child Matters.

In 2021, the Government of Canada made September 30 the National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, a federal statutory day that answers Call to Action 80 of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission.

📌 Did you know?
• There were 140 federally run residential schools in Canada, operating between 1867 and 1996.
• Many children who were taken to these schools never returned home.
• Phyllis has written several children's books about her experience, including The Orange Shirt Story, and leads the Orange Shirt Society to keep the story alive.

Today, the Peace Tower in Ottawa is lit in orange, and Canadians across the country wear orange to honour residential school survivors, their families, and the children who never came home.

It all started with one little girl and one orange shirt.🧡

Entering the teaching lab for the first time can be both daunting and exciting for biology students. Qubit Systems origi...
09/24/2026

Entering the teaching lab for the first time can be both daunting and exciting for biology students. Qubit Systems origin was in the design of affordable teaching systems for undergraduate biology laboratories, and education remains an important part of what we do today. We reduce the daunting aspects of laboratory teaching and emphasise the excitement.

Little can be learned by a group of students watching a piece of expensive research equipment churn out numbers and generate graphs; students need to know what the equipment is doing and how it is doing it. Qubit’s modular Q-teach packages for monitoring photosynthesis, human metabolism, nitrogen fixation, aquatic biology, and animal and insect respirometry are designed to put students in the driving seat, conducting experiments fully detailed in Qubit’s teaching manuals. After that, they may developing and testing their own hypotheses.

If you are a researcher tasked with developing new teaching labs for your biology courses while weighted down with the stress of publish or perish, Qubit can relieve the strain. If you are an educator frustrated by the lack of affordable laboratory equipment for conducting teaching experiments in the way that biology researchers go about their business, our Q-teach packages are exactly what you need. Designed to be used for groups of 2 – 4 students, the teaching lab becomes a collaborative environment of shared ideas as our intuitive software reveals the workings of physiological processes under various conditions.

Please contact us if you’d like us to help you with your labs; our staff has decades of teaching experience at the university level.

https://qubitsystems.com/products/q-teach-packages/

Qubit Systems is proud to be working with researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada to provide a multi-...
09/21/2026

Qubit Systems is proud to be working with researchers at the University of Guelph in Ontario, Canada to provide a multi-channel gas exchange system for monitoring emissions from large, domesticated animals (predominantly pigs), in a new barn facility. Principal Investigator, Dr. Lee-Anne Huber in the Department of Animal Sciences, with funding from the Canadian Foundation for Innovation, will be studying pig respirometry using Qubit’s O2 and CO2 analysers, as well as emissions of methane, nitrous oxide and ammonia using Qubit’s new line of Laser Gas Detection analysers.

Lee-Anne's research involves practical feeding recommendations for swine and she has developed precision feeding programs for gestating and lactating sows that closely match estimated nutrient and energy requirements and improve sow productivity. She has also generated feeding recommendations for late-gestating sows aimed at maximizing mammary development and milk production in the subsequent lactation period, which have been implemented on commercial farms in Canada and the United States.

Qubit has a long association with the University of Guelph, Canada’s most prestigious institution for domesticated animal studies and veterinary research and we look forward to continued collaboration.

Learn more about Qubit Systems at www.qubitsystems.com

Address

1573 John Counter Boulevard
Kingston, ON
K7M3L5

Opening Hours

Monday 9am - 5pm
Tuesday 9am - 5pm
Wednesday 9am - 5pm
Thursday 9am - 5pm
Friday 9am - 5pm

Telephone

+16133841977

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