News published: 12 January 2023

The Global Genome Initiative (GGI) was established “to preserve and understand the genomic diversity of life” through the use of sequencing technology. Botanic gardens play a central role in the provision of high-quality genomic samples for this purpose, across the botanical tree of life. Since 2015, GGI-Gardens has partnered with 40 gardens to collect nearly 20,000 samples and, in cooperation with the GGBN, are ensuring these tissue samples are well preserved and properly stored in biorepositories. These will provide future access to high quality genomic samples for the international research community. 

Image credit: Devin Dotson, US Botanic Garden

The use of BGCI’s PlantSearch and ThreatSearch databases has significantly enhanced GGI-Gardens’ ability to identify gaps in their sampling. They discovered that some 9,000 vascular plant genera had not yet been sampled, of which 5,025 are reported within the world’s botanic garden living collections. Gardens in biodiverse countries such as South Africa, Australia, and Indonesia are also hosts to unique genera not yet sampled. GGI-Gardens, together with BGCI and the United States Botanic Garden, has therefore developed an annual awards programme to reach out to botanic gardens to enable the collection of these previously uncatalogued genera from around the world.  

The timing for coordinated collection of genomic tissues could not be better, with large-scale efforts such as ‘The Darwin Tree of Life Project’ and ‘The Earth Biogenome Project’ are underway to sequence the genomes of all species on earth. Tissues collected by the GGI-Gardens programme will help facilitate these and other sequencing projects through coordinated and targeted sampling approaches.