Morton Arboretum

The Morton Arboretum will lead a research project to support enhanced management of botanic garden metacollections, which are the combined collections of many separate institutions stewarded collaboratively to achieve broader research and conservation purposes. A central challenge for metacollections is to efficiently and effectively manage genetic diversity of hundreds or thousands of plants per species across numerous institutions. The project team includes 13 partner institutions that will address research-focused objectives to determine when GIS-based metrics of collection breadth are reliable for decision making; which accessions are most and least secure, requiring different levels of care; and how hybridization varies among species and institutions. The project team will share results through webinars focused on reaching curators of living plant collections. The research findings will support informed decision-making leading to increased genetic diversity in botanic garden collections.