31 May 2010

ANBG: New seed drying facility

A new seed drying facility at the Australian National Botanic Gardens has been funded with a $60,000 gift from the Friends of the Gardens.

The room means ANU post-doctoral fellow Dr Gemma Hoyle, and her team, can keep working with increasingly large amounts of seed, in a best-practice facility, collecting, drying and freezing Australian alpine seed.

The Australian alpine ecosystem has been identified as critically vulnerable to climate change and the Australian National Botanic Gardens has identified this nationally significant ecosystem as a focus for its future collection and research activities.

The Australian Alpine Seed and Seedling Ecology Project began in 2009 in conjunction with the Australian National University and the Friends of the Gardens after the Australian Research Council identified the Gardens as the only facility to have initiated effort to collect and conserve seeds of Australian Alpine plant species for further use, regeneration and research.

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