World’s first tropical seed bank opens in Pingtung’s Kaoshu township

The Dr. Cecilia Koo Botanic Conservation Center, named after its leading financial sponsor and the widow of business tycoon Koo Chen-fu, is situated in a 5000-hectare ranch owned by the Koo family with a five-year budget of NT$100 million, said Lee Chia-wei, the center’s executive-director and a professor of life sciences at Tsin Hua University in Hsinchu.

Although only 4,600 tropical plant species from 13 geniuses have thus far been collected by the center, they had already spread over a cultivated area covering five hectares when the center opened Saturday, Lee said, making it the largest collection in Taiwan.

Most plants in the collection are plants of rare or endangered species, including the world biggest and smallest phalaenopsis.

In order to enrich the center’s collection, Lee said the center’s staff have visited more than 150 leading plant nurseries around the world to gather rare plant species.

Noting that there are already two other seed conservation centers in the world, Kew Gardens in England and the Missouri Botanical Garden in St. Louis, United States, Lee said both of them were dedicated to the conservation of temperate plants, while his center is dedicated to the conservation of tropical plants.

He said the center will become Asia’s largest repository of live plants in five years, the world’s most important tropical plants in ten years, and will boast a collection of 30,000 plant species within two decades.

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