Atlanta Botanical Garden

The Atlanta Botanical Garden (ABG) will improve stewardship of its collections by creating a seed and pollen bank to provide a physical backup of the genetic diversity held in the Conservation Collections, that will decrease vulnerability to loss due to climate change and provide safeguards in the event of extinction in the wild. The project team from the Southeastern Center for Conservation at ABG will store pollen and seed from five plants from each of the 300 conservation population collections (for a total of 1,350 pollen and 1,200 seed samples). In addition, they will transfer collection data to an online searchable platform accessible to the public. Undergraduate and high school students will participate in plant conservation research focused on imperiled species in the southeastern United States and will assist the laboratory manager and technician in aspects related to collections curation, conservation horticulture, seed banking, and micropropagation.