INALA JURASSIC GARDEN

GONDWANA ON BRUNY ISLAND, TASMANIA

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This program was funded by the Global Genome Initiative (GGI-Gardens) and the United States Botanic Garden (USBG) and is administered through the Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI) Global Botanic Garden Fund. We are proud members of BGCI and GGBN.

Inala Jurassic Garden is the only botanic garden in Australia, and one of just fourteen in the world, to receive a 2021 GGI-Gardens Award to help preserve genetic plant material.

The GGI-Gardens Awards Program aims to promote partnership activities to preserve and understand Earth’s genomic biodiversity of plants. The Program provided funding to support sampling activities from living collections with unique families and genera of vascular plants not yet represented in Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) biorepositories.

We identified that Inala Jurassic Garden successfully grows just over 100 plant specimens that were not included in GGBN biorepositories in our living collection. Over the course of 2021 we collected living samples from these plants - specimens were dried, pressed, mounted on specialised paper and labeled. Additional genetic samples of each specimen were also taken, dried in silica gel and stored in perpetuity. The completed herbarium vouchers are now located in the Tasmanian Herbarium in Hobart for storage and study, and all information provided to GGBN for inclusion in their database, publicly accessible via the GGBN Online Portal.