The FTA Herbarium is part of the Department of Crop Sciences and Agroforestry. It is affiliated with the Tropical Botany and Ethnobiology Lab (TRIBE) team. The Herbarium in conjunction with the Botanical Garden forms FTA’s primary facility for research and education in tropical botany and agronomy.
A herbarium is a scientific reference collection of permanently preserved plant specimens for species identification and is also useful for the determination of species’ geographical distribution, abundance, habitats, and flowering and fruiting periods. The FTA Herbarium is a collection focused on tropical useful plant species, including major and minor crops and wild useful plants.
Our mission is to provide expertise in plant taxonomy and maintain the collection to ensure the plant specimens are conveniently stored, databased and systematically ordered to be quickly accessible to students, researchers and the general public for scientific research and education. Our activities include collection and taxonomic identification of plants within the field research in the tropics, herbarium collections-based research, education and public service on identification, cultivation and utilization of tropical and subtropical crops and plants. These activities are closely linked with ethnobiological and agronomic research on crops and the domestication of wild plant species.
The Herbarium is used by undergraduate and graduate students enrolled in FTA courses and/or interested in using herbarium collections for their thesis projects. FTA researchers and plant taxonomists, biologists, ecologists, conservationists and teachers within CZU or external can also benefit from the specimens and library found in the herbarium for biodiversity, ecological, and ethnobotanical research studies and education on world biodiversity.
Our collection includes dried and mounted plants, including pressed and bulk specimens, seeds and wood collections, and liquid-preserved specimens (spirit collection). The Herbarium is stocked with materials for pressing, drying, mounting and archiving plant specimens. Its area consists of the Preparation Room equipped with a herbarium dryer, a freezer (to -45 °C) and a fume box; the Mounting Room for preparation of herbarium voucher specimens; Herbarium Collection Room equipped with archiving cabinets, computers, audiovisual equipment and stereoscopic microscopes.
More information can be found on the TRIBE team website.