News published: 09 July 2024

The Global Genome Initiative (GGI) is a collaborative science-based endeavour to collect the Earth’s genomic biodiversity, preserve it in the world’s biorepositories and make it available to researchers everywhere.

Since 2020 the Global Genome Initiative for Gardens (GGI-Gardens), Botanic Gardens Conservation International (BGCI), BGCI-US, and the United States Botanic Garden (USBG) have provided partnership funding to facilitate the collection of priority plant taxa and preserve their genomic information in Global Genome Biodiversity Network (GGBN) partnered biorepositories. At the time, it was estimated that approximately half of all vascular plant genera not safeguarded in any genomic biobank were available in botanic gardens. Since 2020, the GGI-Gardens Partnership Awards have supported the collection of more than 3,000 plant genera, including 25% of those genera previously not preserved in any genomic biobank.

The 2023 GGI-Gardens Awards Program supported nine institutions. Seven of nine institutions collected genomic and herbarium voucher specimens from 1,434 total vouchers, from 652 genera and 254 families. These collections represent high priorities for the global genomics community. Among them, 147 genera and five families were not previously represented in the GGBN biobank.

Data from these collections will be added to the GGBN Web Portal. They will be available to facilitate genomics research, conservation projects and collaboration among gardens, policymakers, conservation practitioners, and researchers worldwide.

Below is a summary of the 2023 recipients of the GGI-Garden Partnerships, highlighting their contributions to collections: