On Thursday 12 May we held our third Plant Treasures webinar in collaboration with BCARM. This webinar featured an introduction from John Arnott, outlining the links between ANPC and BGANZ since their inception; and BGANZ as a resource for capacity building in botanic gardens of all sizes, especially to support smaller teams or individuals working on plant conservation in larger organisations. This is available as a separate short clip.
The webinar also included:

• Lorraine Perrins at the Royal Tasmanian Botanical Gardens talking about the benefits of seed orchards for ease of access, monitoring and timing of seed collection, and bulking up seed numbers; and the time frame and challenges associated with curating seed orchards.
• Zoe Knapp at the Australian National Botanic Garden explaining the links between ANBG and partner organisations, the role of botanic gardens and importance of horticultural expertise in conservation, with examples from collaborative projects.
• Amanda Shade from Kings Park and Botanic Garden discussing biosecurity, including definition, implications for management of existing collections including quarantine, hygiene, monitoring and assessment and record keeping. Importance of surveillance programs such as the Botanic Gardens Biosecurity Network and the International Plant Sentinel Network.
• Sally Norton from the Australian Grains Genebank talking about conservation of crop wild relatives, the differences in handling cultivated species and crop wild relatives, and the challenges of regenerating collections in the field and nursery.
• Questions and answers for presenters and a panel discussion led by Michael Elgey, including discussion of collaborative projects such as TroMPS, the role of translocation, and the increasing focus on conservation in living collections strategies within botanic gardens.

NEW Videos for the ANPC ‘Plant Germplasm Conservation In Australia’ playlist including the role of the nursery and living collections in plant management, cutting propagation in the conservation nursery, and collection and processing of fern spores. These are available as separate clips in our YouTube Germplasm playlist.